i whould play it

-Probably shouldn't have the charge bar flash (can get annoying). Maybe you could have it flash when it fills, then just leave it full until used.
-Having the torches light individual spots in the underground is a nice effect. Reminds me of Zelda 3.
-In low lighting, it is difficult to tell what you have targeted, because the targeting reticle is very bright but the enemy has very low light.
-The lightning effect is pretty cool, but it looks a bit weird because it doesn't cast any light--any possibility of having the lightning strips acting as light sources?
-The looooooong charge time in between shots may make sense logically, but from a player's emotional standpoint, it feels underpowered and unsatisfying. Perhaps if you increased the charge rate but decreased the actual bomb damage?


GREAT work so far, Midi!

-Will do.
-Thanks. ^^
-Maybe I could have targetted enemies glow, like in Diablo 2?
-What do you mean? It lights the entire view at once? And I don't get what you're saying by "lightning strips".
-Equipping runestones decreases charge time. It works like in Megaman Legends and Solatorobo, where all the attack stats are based on your equipment. Also, Trey charges faster naturally, but does less damage.

Thanks a whole lot for the constructive feedback. It's more than I could have asked for.

Even in megaman, there is a base attack that is pretty weak, but can be fired rapidly. If your base attack in KL requires a long charge-up time, it won't feel 'fun' to the player.

I think I see what you're saying. Maybe I'll cut out the charge up time and make it like it was before where you just had to have enough mana at a time.

Yeah, glowy/highlighted enemies when you target them is good.

Lightning strips--the lighting effect is a strip of line segments from the source (the boss) to the target (the end of the lightning bolt). Lightning is a light source in the real world, but your lightning here isn't giving off any light, so it subconsciously feels odd.

Oh, actually, it is giving off light. The lightning itself glows. If it didn't, it would look dark since it's in a cave. But I guess what you're saying is to make the glow wider, right? I think that would look good, but the problem there is that GM doesn't support blurred lines and whatnot, so I'd have to trick it by using a stretched gradient or something. Hmm... *folds arms* Challenge accepted.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/...../#cid:28917155

Yay I'm a placeholder sprite! Looks super awesome so far!

You'll also be appearing in the "Game Freak" building along with everyone else who helped. That's where you'll introduce yourself as one of the key artists.

I think it'd be neat if there were blown up character portraits for key dialog sequences, kind of like this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you applying for a job here? ^^

mayyyyybe

I had already planned on commissioning you for refs of all the other main cast members. I could use those images to make the dialog images too.

Cool. Miss you.

Looks pretty cool so far :D Can't really give you any tips beyond what has already been said to be honest since I have no idea about anything related to game design xD

I noticed you said you can't fix the lighting. But I have a similar (but more complex) lighting system where all sprites in my game have a lighting sprite and I use some nifty blend modes and a couple surfaces so that anything that gives off light will draw that light only on the lighting sprite, based on the lighting sprite's greyscale whiteness. (kind of hard to explain but it's a similar concept, in some ways. It's meant to mimic directional lighting even though the light given off is usually just a circular gradient sprite)

Have you tried putting the lighting stuff in the end step event? My solution was actually to stick the lighting setup in the end step (so it prepares the surfaces, but doesn't draw them) and draw the lighting surface itself in the draw event. I remember having your problem before, but after arranging the scripts to those events, it's worked perfectly.


Also, I'd like to repeat what Tetric said: While your charge mechanism reminds me of Secret of Mana... I consider that a very bad thing, because I hated that combat system. (I may get a lot of hate for that statement, but it's true) Having to run around and wait for a charge meter to fill is very unsatisfying and can also be unnecessarily frustrating. It's actually not a bad idea in concept but you really should flesh it out a bit more. I think a really neat solution would be to have different attacks that use different amounts of the charge bar. Maybe you have two attack buttons and each can be assigned to different weapons, and maybe some weapons can be used by multiple characters. That way you could give the player a variety of choices that might have different play styles. A sword might make for Zelda-like combat, while a magic bow could give the player a ranged advantage when they get a chance to charge their bar half full. A dagger might be super spammable, great for fast damage output, using no charge at all, but it would have almost no knockback effect and the range would be terrible, making fights against fast or ranged enemies dangerous. Throwing weapons might not go much farther than bombs, but they could use a smaller charge (like 1/4 bar) and be pretty handy weapons in general. Spears might have a decent range and knockback effect, but they would eat up your charge bar in a couple hits and leave your diagonals open for punishment.

Heck, you could even have defensive weapons. Something that blocks ranged and melee attacks from one direction, but stops your bar from charging while you're actively blocking? Maybe a better one that depletes your charge meter slowly as you use it, but sends projectiles back at enemies. Or a spiked shield that doubles as a low-damage high-knockback melee weapon!


Deapite some issues, your game is looking and sounding great. I hope Game Maker treats you well as you continue with development! :>

I am actually doing something like that. See, every light object draws their light sprite onto a surface with subtractive blending, and then that surface is subtracted from the screen. I tried moving it to the end step, but got no better results.

Also, for the charge bar, I'm thinking of doing something like Castlevania: Order of Eclessia where the charge bar recharges very quickly, and different attacks use different ammounts, but the recharge pauses each time you attack. For instance, I already have it where Trey's whip attack takes up half the bar instead of the whole thing, since it's a short range attack, and his dark shift ability, rather than taking from the bar each time he uses it, slowly drains it as he remains in the dark shifted state, wherein he can attack all he wants to with a dash move. Trey's powers are also affected by the ambient lighting; dark areas increase the usefulness of his attacks.

I've also found that having both characters able to fight and be hurt at the same time causes partners to die way too easily. So instead, only the controlled character can fight, but is also the only one who can take damage (something Avatar should have done on GBA).

Honestly, I haven't considered giving my characters weapons to equip since they already have such a wide variety of spells; it's already sort of Zelda like with that, so I'm afraid adding weapons would be too overwhelming to the players.

By the way, this is the last game I'm maknig with Game Maker. When they announced the pricing for GM Studio, I decided I was done with YoYo and I should go completely into SDL. That's why I'm also working on a GDK, which I'll make open source once I feel it's ready for others to use it.

I'm actually happy with GM Studio's pricing. $100 is a nice base price, and a real drop in the bucket for anyone monetizing their games. (less so for anyone doing it just for fun though, but they do have the cheaper/free versions) and now that you can test on modules you haven't paid for, there's no need to drop the $100 per module before you even know your game will work on those platforms.
Studio has some pretty good features and while the price seems high... it's nothing compared to most things I use. It's like $1000 to get 3D Studio Max or Maya, it's $1500 for Unity... before you get the equally expensive Android, Flash and iOS licenses... and Photoshop alone (don't get me started on the whole Adobe suite) costs like $600. Many of those come cheaper or free as trials/student versions, but so does Studio now.

Honestly, I'm probably not sticking with GM Studio after my current game. I'll definitely bust it out if I want to make some quickie games for fun, but it's a bit too limited for my taste. Still, at the current price point it works pretty well. It is a big jump from what I paid for GM 8, though. That was pretty much an impulse buy for me. :P

Not that I'm saying you should go back to GM after this, though. I just think the pricing is pretty fair when you consider how much a lot of software out there costs. It wasn't easy to find the $300 to shell out for it but I gladly did.