I feel rather embarassed to admit this, but...I have no creative ideas to move ahead with. I have 2-4 finished, I have a boss battle to make so I can begin World 3. I just haven't thought of what I'm going to do for this boss battle, and in an unusual turn of events, I've been focusing more on what I've been doing now than what I'm going to do later.

I don't think this little creative dry spell will last, but this is the first time I've ever had this problem. Not too sure how to react.

I haven't had any time between the last post and now to get any work done on the game. Work has been hectic, and game playing mostly has gone to either Virtual On or Tales of Symphonia. I hope to get some work done here pretty soon, and the creative dry spell went away right after I posted it.

So, other than taking a small break from rpgmaker, I've also found and booted up my two garbage games, Don't Move and Find the Needle in the Haystack, and gave them both a playthrough. Just like I mentioned in this topic, I want to release sequels to these games, and playing through them has refreshed me on what I've made, and given me ideas on where to take them.

Since Don't Move was a Pav exclusive and Find the Needle in the Haystack was a Mag exclusive, I think I'll keep their sequels in the same places too.

So the Mag can look forward to FtNitH 2 soon!

So today I booted up that shiny red disk and did some more work.

I have the basic layout for the second world boss. It's a racetrack that will have multiple obstacles as the boss, Dark Horse, tries to catch up with you and take a life. When you pass the finish line, you beat the level!

To be honest the track is a little barebones, so I'm not enjoying the layout right now. Oddly enough, this is the second time I've made a horse racing track, the first being an ending on A Work in Progress. And that first racetrack looked far better. So what I think I'm going to do is load up that map, see what I did, and make a new layout based on that.

I also went back to previous levels and did some bug fixing, and it was unfortunately pretty bad. Thankfully the playtesting helped make the mistakes obvious, so fixing them was fairly simple.

I've also been thinking about space on the memory cards...I think it's inevitable that the game will take at least three memory cards. With how things are going, it's possible to spill into a fourth. Unfortunately, the game is taking up far more memory than what I expected. Eight worlds may be asking too much, and I may consider trimming that down to six worlds. It's something I'm still considering, so we'll see what happens as more space is taken up.

I'm also deciding on difficulty levels. There will be, basically four: two will have different enemy layouts, and two difficulties will be different variations on those.

There's Normal difficulty, which is the basic difficulty level.
Easy is exactly like Normal; changes include an increase of lives to ten, and you can't progress in Easy mode.

Then there's Hard mode, which involves more enemies, and slighty different layouts. More hidden levels can be obtained in this mode; while hidden levels are harder to pass, they also reveal more goodies. And after Hard? The dreaded Difficult mode! Here, you try and beat the entire game with one life. One hit, you're dead. It's made slighty easier because the enemy layout won't change from Hard, but completing this is not gonna be a cakewalk!

So:
Easy (Lots of lives, but no progression)
Normal (The standard difficulty)
Hard (Tougher, but has more hidden levels)
Difficult (Same as Hard, but you only have one life!)

So that's the progress I've made insofar. Keep your eyes glued for any and all progress reports for this game!




PS: A couple nights ago, my local arcade had an event where you paid some cash up front, and all the machines were set to free play. Free play for three hours. FREE PLAY. If Josh was alive and well, he would've been in heaven.

Exactly what happened with Jester's Hunt. Though I might first consider taking out the redundancy of a couple of the difficulty modes. For starters, scrap Easy Mode. We won't need more than the standard set of lives. Enemy movement in RPGM1 is predictable enough.

Might also consider scrapping Difficult Mode, since its only difference is you have one life. Maybe just have less lives in Hard Mode. Can't say for sure, though. Some would welcome the challenge of having only 1 life, I'm sure.

Scrapping difficulties might be a good idea, but it's really the large levels and the complicated coding that takes up the most memory, of which there's very little I'd want to cut.

I may scrap Easy mode, but personally I think I'll keep Difficult. I love the challenge of a really tough game, and there's just something to be said for the people that complete the hardest difficulty level in any given game. It feels like I'm putting out a test, make some stepping stones first, and then Difficult is my way of saying, "You've played my game, good job and thanks. Now, do you think you can handle the toughest difficulty I can throw out there? Do you have what it takes?"

In case you haven't heard the news:

viewtopic.php?f=139&t=8527

Josh's Adventure will be at the Magcon!

I'm really quite psyched for this. I'm eager to see what other members of the community will think of this big project I've been working on for the last couple of months. At the same time, I'm super anxious and a little (well okay....a lot) worried, because I don't know how the game will be received.

(And hey, Magcon guys. Don't treat the game nice and cuddly; give me honest opinions! No fluff!)

So, I'm planning to make a playable demo for the Magcon, and shortly afterwards I'd like to release it publicly for everyone to play. Before the announcement I figured I would release a demo late in the year, and because of this new announcement and my rapid decision, I'm a little shocked it will happen so early, when I was planning on doing this much later in the year.

Oh well, no time like the present!

Right now I'm doing the very last touches on my Calculator project, but soon afterward I'm jumping right back to JA. I've got quite a bit of work ahead of me if I'm going to have a playable demo.

Ugh. So much to do before the demo, so little time. How am I going to start?

Might get some headway into this tomorrow or the day after.

With no general direction in mind, I worked on JA today.

First, and maybe most importantly, I played the game I've made up till now. After playing through the first world, despite some small text problems, it works completely, and is a fun little game. I think that really has helped me. It's like, "Hey, you know what? You've got a real winner on your hands. This is polished, bug-free and pretty dang fun." So, the past few days worth of anxiety and "what am I going to do?", is cleared up, and I'm set to get this demo ready. So, a little advice for those in a game-making rut: try playing what you've made already. It might give you ideas on what to do next.

So the first thing I did is I went back to my first levels and cleaned up some text I didn't like. When I first started making the game, it was more like "Just finish this so I can move on to the next one". The game didn't have a particular style to it just yet. Now that I've found the niche I want to hit with this game, I went back and typed in some better text that will make the game flow a little better. It's almost crazy how many little things have to be considered when making a game, come to think of it. But I'll leave that for another topic.

One of the bigger changes I've made is to the hubworld itself. The hubworld is located on the top-left of the dungeon map. And I just got this great idea for a new feature that takes up most of the left-side of the hubworld. So, in order to make it fit, I had to move the entire hubworld over four or five spaces. Not so difficult, right? Until you realize that I'll have to move ALL of the events to match the new placement. That won't be too fun. On the other hand, hopefully I'll have the new feature up and running by the time the demo is released. And when I make more headway into that feature (most likely sometime today), I'll tell you about it.

The demo again will be available at the Magcon first, then made public shortly afterwards. Look forward to it!

Whew, it's been almost a week since I've done any progress. And what with a deadline coming up soon to finish a demo version, you'd think I'd be more productive. But I've been busy and have only recently had any time to work on this, and even then I'm still working inbetween a busy schedule.

First thing today I fixed was the event/new level scenario in the hubworld. Last time I re-arranged the dungeon to implement a new idea of mine, and today I moved all the events so they look exactly how they are supposed to be set before the change. Today's other big focus was on the tutorial level, which has been updated slightly to go a bit farther. After reflecting on it....the tutorial is really quite boring, in my mind. I may have to change that somehow.

Not much to say, but it's good to be working on this again.

More work done today.

I find that as I try and ready the game for demo release status, I'm playtesting this baby a lot more, and have found some unfortunate bugs. Unfortunate in that they exist, not that they're troublesome to remove So the first world is nearly bug free, and the second world is recieving 1ce's patented comb over with my anti-glitch and bug comb. Works quite well.

Oh, and one big pain-in-the-ass situation I've found myself in....since I moved the hubworld, I have to redirect all the events that warp to it. And there are a lot of them. ARRRRRRRGH.

Here's some advice from me: write down ALL of your switches. Each and every one, in a easy-to-read document. I started this practice with Donkey Kong, and it makes life so much easier, because I can glance at any given numbered switch and know exactly which level it's in and what it does. In fact, when I had to restart my Calculator project, since I had all the switches written down, starting back up took about half the time it usually would've. JA currently uses more than 80 switches, so having this is a lifesaver.

Anyway....did I derail? Sorry. The excitement of having a playable demo for the Magcon gets me really excited (yeah, that sounds really stupid, sue me). I'm trying to go all-out for this. And hopefully you, too, are looking forward to a demo, and see what I've been blabbering about since I started this back in September. Rise and voice your desire! Hoie hoo!

Wow, it's been that long since you started this, already?


I've heard that, before. And I expect to hear it again at a later date.

I'm almost certain you'll hear that again at a later date. But progress, my good man, PROGRESS! It is being made, and all is right in the world. That's what's important.

So most of yesterday I playtested the second world to see what kind of bugs and glitches I could fix. There were fewer things to fix, surprisingly. I guess as I moved on I have been getting the hang of things a bit more. I still have the issue of resetting switches in the hubworld that I need to do. I have been having a hard time figuring out whether to turn switches off in individual levels, or have the hubworld handle it all.

Another increasingly frustrating aspect of the game I haven't figured out is the tutorial. I don't now how to make one, plain and simple. I've tried having the player go through a mock level, a simple text window with appearing items and a movie-like experience, but none of them feel right. I'm starting to think of just dropping it entirely. Have the player play the game and figure it out for themselves. I dunno. It's getting on my nerves that I still have no idea what to do with it.

So, I'm near done playtesting. After that, I plan to make the world 2 boss, and wrap it up shortly afterward for the demo. Will post more as progress develops.

Today was spent putting an extra level of polish on this game.

Good news and bad news, in today's progress report. The bad news, is I have writer's block. That is to say, I have no idea how to do the second world boss. Very frustrating. The good news is that I've gotten around that by polishing up the title today, going back and adding little improvements to the game that I've wanted to add for a while now. It's so nice to do something you have planned to do, but haven't gotten around to it for whatever reason.

First and foremost, the title has switched from "switches turned off by level" to "all switches are turned off at the hubworld". A change I've wanted to do for a long while now. Now when you warp to the hubworld, all switches that should be turned off, will be. It could have gone either way really, but I think I prefer this setup. This also meant removing old code, which wasn't a huge deal.

Of course, more changes to the text were made in World 1 for consisency.

Another big addition I'm doing is adding the Death Count to every monsters last life event. Not too hard, one would think. Until you reach the first boss level. Instead of that room having one event duplicated several times, the whole room is filled with lots of small events. And to change anything in them, requires you to change ALL of them, which sits around 90 seperate events. *sigh* I'm going to be at this for a while.

Pretty soon I'll also just post a little ramble about the game. One thing I've started to stray from is actually TALKING about the game itself. I'm getting into the habit of not saying much about it, leaving it secret for whoever plays it. That's NOT the best way to approach your audience. So yeah, one of these days I'll get around to doing just that. For now, about 90 events are calling for some editing.

Some more good progress was done today.

First and foremost, I re-coded a bit of the first boss's level so that when you lose your last life, you'll actually warp back to the hubworld. That wasn't in there when I went through the game the first time....baffiling. I don't know why I didn't finish this up, but oh well. It was about 60-70 events long, but I got them all down good.

The second thing and more importantly was to start making new content. For quite a while I've been stuck, not knowing how to approach the second boss. To sidestep this I've been polishing up the title and going back to look at my prior work with a fresh eye, but I've just about run out of things to playtest. So here's what I decided; my original idea had the boss chasing Josh through most of the level, with Josh finishing the level after passing the finish line. I like the idea itself, but the level was pretty crappy. It was an arena, derby style racetrack, and it simply didn't feel like a part of the game. It was my attempt to recreate a similiar racetrack I had made earlier for an ending in A Work in Progress, but it didn't look as good. So my new spin was to make a better level that allowed more freedom to do something creative. I personally love the open, colorful worlds I make, and I love making areas with water or clouds in the background; it gives the game an open and airy feel.

So the new level has more platforms and jumps, and all the while the evil horse will chase you, and you have to run away while dodging obstacles. There are a couple tricks the horse has up his sleeve (technically speaking). It can get a running hop to jump gaps, it can activate bridges to continue chasing you, etc. Only by passing the finish line can you prove your dominance and beat the level.

I got the entire layout done and some simple scripts done. It's looking real good! Hopefully the scripting will go just as smoothly and use the level design to make a challenging level.

It also seems that I actually work on rpgmaker projects during my off days. So Sunday and Monday should be very productive days. Any other day? More than likely, nothing gets worked on. But that's alright, because a good deal of work gets done, and I'm always looking forward to continuing progress.



Something else I noticed. Say videogames are cakes. Usuru was a bad cake with lots of frosting; in the end it still gave you a bad taste in your mouth. Josh's Adventure is a great cake, with little frosting. It doesn't have anything terribly fancy, but the cake is good, which is all that matters. Which makes me wonder....how can you get people to play that? I mean, short of thrusting a controller in someone's hands, good gameplay is a tough sell without anything fancy to go with it.

Just a thought I had.

I wanted to work on this yesterday, but we had to put down one of our dogs, and much sadness ensued. Despite not feeling like it, I worked on JA today.

I have the basic layout for the second boss done, which consists of several grassy race areas. I'm going to start getting in the tricky area of enemy placement.

But rather than do that, I worked on some tweaks today. In the demo, there's a machine that will allow you to access special options once you've obtained at least 60 tokens. You can reset a special Josh's Adventure graphic display, you can get a special item, or unlock the normally locked tutorial level. And today I made sure everything worked on like it was supposed to.

And....that's about it. Not a lot of progress, I guess, but it's been increasingly difficult to work on this project, so hopefully the Magcon debut will give me some much needed motivation and feedback.

Next post will be more cheerful, promise.

And hey....do me a favor, and gimme something to do by asking me a question in this topic: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=8588

Alright, new slight progress.

I've got most of the enemy placement down. I'm currently playtesting to see whether the enemy placement is too difficult or easy.

I have yet to add events that allow the horse boss (named Thunderhoof), to travel between the different landscapes, which I'd like to work on today.

Funny really how much of a roadblock these boss levels are. Both levels so far have taken a long time to develop, with Captain Calcium taking a long time to make and figure out, and Thunderhoof taking forever to find a concept I liked. Actually, I wonder....what if there were fewer bosses? I mean, levels generally take a while to plan, develop, playtest and finish; but boss battles take a lot more resources. Maybe one boss every two levels would be good. But I also kinda hate the idea, because boss battles are kind of expected from the player, and it allows me to use unique ideas I couldn't otherwise. I think I'll stick with the one boss per world, but I'd like to hear more opinions about this.

I also have some new plans for World 3. While I don't have a fancy name for it yet, it would be themed around rocky cliffs. Climbing up and down perilious cliffs, dealing with snow and ice, and of course, long falls and tricky jumps. This will be a step up in difficulty from the previous two worlds.

God, it's so odd. For the most part this game has been unplayable and, for the most part, unseeable to the majority of you. So being able to let everyone play my stuff is still kind of a shock. I mean, nobody's played this other than me, and now within a short span of a month I'll release it to anyone to see. What I hope to see is a lot of reactions to this; obviously, something I've been working on for so long, I hope there's alot of people that want to try this out. And I also hope you guys will give me lots of feedback on this as well.

A bit more work today.

I continue to chug away at the second boss level. Thankfully this level is not nearly as complex or big as the first, so it's just more tedious work than difficult. The transitions between certain platforms is what I'm working on next. You jump to a new platform, and the evil Thunderhoof finds ways to keep up with you, and that's primarily what I'm doing now. It's nearly finished.

Come to think of it, the entire demo will be finished very soon. I don't think it'd be unrealistic to say the demo could be finished within a week. It slighty disappoints me that I'll have a completed demo sitting in storage for nearly a month waiting for Magcon though.

I do think, however, that I need another motivational boost. Working on the game is becoming a bit more difficult, and I think I'm just getting eager to see some reactions to what I've been doing.

So, here's some information for the demo version:

There's 2 worlds, 2 bosses and 8 levels.
(I can't remember the level names off the top of my head. May be subject to change.)

World 1: Monster Beach
1-1: Dive
1-2: Sandy Beach
1-3: Bridges
1-4: BB Gun
Boss: Captain Calcium

World 2: Kentucky Bluegrasslands
2-1: March
2-2: Wild Green
2-3: Risk
2-4: Trial
Boss: Thunderhoof

In the game is a machine that you can trade tokens for special items. In the demo you can unlock special features by collecting more than 60 tokens. You can reset a special Josh's Adventure graphic display, you can get a special item, or unlock the normally locked tutorial level.

There are some items you can collect that have no real value; points can be earned for bragging rights, and death counts add up so you can track how many times you've died in the game.

Oh, and there will also be a man in a tux that meows; he'll give you the item that allows you to access World 2, without having to finish World 1 first.

Right now the game doesn't have a save point in the hubworld either...I'm beginning to wonder if the demo needs one? Couldn't hurt to add it, I guess.

I'm out for now! More progress next time!

So the coding on the second boss is nearly complete. Most of the coding is complete, there's only a small portion of coding left to do, some playtesting to make sure it all works, and the demo will be ready way ahead of schedule.

I'm pumped!

Actually, come to think of it, there have been fewer responses from other members lately....am I scaring you guys off? Intimidating? Or do you not have anything to respond to? Am I ignoring you? I wanna hear some voices! Someone out there has to be excited for this...other than me, anyway. Hopefully these little progress updates aren't boring.

The meowing tux seems to be a running gag in your WIPs.