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View Full Version : Yoyo comp entry: Gary the Christmas Slime



Nandrew
23-12-2007, 07:00 PM
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/20624

http://www.yoyogames.com/extras/image/name/san1/467/52467/large/screenshot105.jpg?1198426990 http://www.yoyogames.com/extras/image/name/san1/469/52469/large/screenshot107.jpg?1198427150

Follow the link, and you'll find a submission to Yoyo's winter competition which I spent a massive 24 hours developing.

It's shallow and won't win prizes (some of those games are of an amazing standard, by the way!) but it's been ages since I've made a game and now I have a little ninja-rope slime to show for it.

Moreover, I created this game while working on a prototype for a similar "swinging slime" game which I hope to continue work on ... so please offer your comments if you decide to play this game, your input is contributing towards a bigger project than this!

I hope you find it immensely satisfying to swing about with Gary the Christmas Slime. ;)

Tr00jg
23-12-2007, 10:02 PM
Nandrew, this is so made of win!

I love the christmas music with the "chiiio" from the elves. I wasn't expecting an entry from you at all. I'm holding thumbs.

|-|1Pp13
23-12-2007, 10:50 PM
i seem to rember playing a very similar game a l000000ng time ago
you were a venus-flytrap potplant, you had to navigate levels chomping on flies and avouiding enimies.

but definitly an awsome game Nandrew

dislekcia
24-12-2007, 01:03 AM
I so want to play this... But Yoyogames is being tardworthy :(

-D

Thaumaturge
24-12-2007, 07:02 AM
It sounds like a lot of fun - the download doesn't seem to be working, but I've installed the add-on for Firefox and should hopefully get to play it later today (or tomorrow, as I tend to think of it :P). ^_^

Gazza_N
24-12-2007, 11:00 AM
I so want to play this... But Yoyogames is being tardworthy :(

Ditto. Any chance of putting it up on Filecloset instead?

ON a random note, I have a friend named Gary who has just earned himself a rather perplexing nickname. Thanks for the inspiration. MWAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! >:D

Cyberninja
24-12-2007, 11:03 AM
The game is awesome. Like I said before, controlled but free! :D

Nandrew
24-12-2007, 02:39 PM
A filecloset link, for all those dozens of people here who are probably tearing their hair out over Yoyo's excellent site navigation.

http://gamedev.openhazel.co.za/filecloset/data/files/303/ChristmasSlime.zip

Gazza_N
24-12-2007, 08:01 PM
Ha ha ha ha haaaa! Awesome! What a fun little game! :D

Nandrew
24-12-2007, 11:19 PM
I'm glad that people are having fun with this. ;)

That said, however, I've mentioned already that this is effectively a "prototype" of a very similar game that I'm working on (though minus the Santa hat and crazy elves :P ). One of the pressing issues that I'm having at the moment is the control scheme -- I'm trying to create an all-mouse interface that the player can feel comfortable with from the word go, and I want to make it just right.

My question: how do the controls for this game feel? Is it easy to pick up and play? How long did it take before you were comfortable with pulling off a Tarzan?

What frustrated you most about the slime's movement?

Did anything feel *wrong* about how it handled?

-------

I'm working on the main game prototype right now, and hopefully I'll have a nice playable demo for you guys soon. I'm not going to release anything piecemeal -- as far as I'm concerned, Gary the Christmas Slime is a good show of many game dynamics already (albeit shallow, arcade-style ones) and I'm going to put in a lot more work before I throw out anything else. You'll see a new thread when it happens.

Please note also that I'll probably be on the lookout for an artist on this project if I get as far as releasing an initial demo, and would be cool with either using him/her for pure grunt work (I point, you draw) or actually working with him/her as a collaborator (co-operating on game development issues and basically forming a design partnership).

That's my little spiel. It's been a long time since I've gotten my hands dirty in actual game development, and I'm feeling like quite the eager little beaver right now. :P

My current project is somewhat ambitious, but I theeeeenk it can be pulled off depending on how much help I get. We'll see what happens -- for now I'll just focus on the demo.

Chuluka
26-12-2007, 03:31 PM
Its awesome:D:D:D

I suggest that you make the levels bigger and have it so that once you get all the presents on the level you move on to the next that way it'll be far more fun:)

Thaumaturge
27-12-2007, 07:06 AM
Thank you for the FileCloset link, Nandrew. ^_^

The game is rather cool. ^_^

As to the rope-swinging mechanic itself, I very much like it. I love the degree of spring that it has (enabling some quite impressive jumps). On the other hand, the rope otherwise (and a little ironically) feels a little "stiff" to me - the swings don't respond quite as much as I might like, and I think that it might help to allow the player to bounce a little (up and down, that is) on the rope from a standing start, especially in order to make climbing a little easier).

Funnily enough, I was recently thinking about a part of an algorithm behind such ropes, having, as I recall, been recently playing Liero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liero). Am I correct in thinking that rope segments are split when they encounter geometry, and reconstituted when the angle between the upper segment and the lower changes sign (taking the direction of the upper as zero) and can they once again form an unobstructed line?

Nandrew
27-12-2007, 01:15 PM
Haha, I thought my rope handled kinda like Liero's as well when I tested. ;)

You know, Chippit brought up the same "stiffness" issue with me ... so that will be changed, and the slime will have more mid-air control from now on.

Please note, however, that Gary the Christmas Slime is going to stay the way it is -- all changes are being made to the *new* game only, so don't bother rechecking Yoyo or Filecloset for another version of Gary. I'll get another thread up for the other game once I'm satisfied with the progress being made.

-----

As for the rope code:

Yes, mine's very similar to what's stated, but far less intelligent and maybe a teensy bit more prone to trouble. :P

The rope is essentially a doubly-linked list, albeit a screwed-up one because due to the way I coded it (and not realising that I was actually creating a list, was kinda just experimenting), the "child" always generates the "parent". So yeah, I don't know how this happened. Go figure. Naming semantics aside, the list starts with two members -- the head of the list, or the slime itself, and one additional element -- the little glob on the end that you send out.

When the slime moves in such a way that it intersects geometry, it immediately compares the current position of the nodes to their previous positions (their x,y in the last frame, in other words) and uses a quick little alg to determine which corner of the block it should hook on to. This "hook" becomes another element inserted into the list, and child-parent relations are adjusted accordingly.

To test for eliminating a node in the list, I simply test each node's child and parent node. If they can see each other (!collision_line(child.x,child.y,parent.x,parent.y )), then I deem the current node to be obsolete and remove it from the list.


Now, I doubt that this code would hold up in all ninja rope situations. In fact, it would probably fail fantastically if it operated outside a specific set of conditions. But of course, half the fun in game development is being able to cheat, and the fact that my levels are effectively grid-based means that I have a rope which will never be stress-tested. And the player is none the wiser. ;)

Thaumaturge
30-12-2007, 12:25 AM
Aah fair enough - very interesting, thank you. ^_^

*sigh* So many cool gameplay and visual techniques, so little time. ^^;


... the "child" always generates the "parent".

o_0 *chuckles* I see. :P