Deluge Deep In The Burrows
Category ————————— Puzzle/Platformer
File Size: —————– 17.8 MB (zipped)
GM Version: ———————– GM8.1 Pro
Vista Compatible: —————– unknown
Changes Screen Resolution: —– no
Latest Version! (as of Nov 19, 2012) No bugs!
DOWNLOAD: DelugeRedo_010_exe
Previously posted downloads:
DelugeRedo_004: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46956737/DelugeRedo_004.exe
Deluge Redo 001: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46956737/DelugeRedo_001.exe
Jam Release Version: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46956737/DelugeDeepInTheBurrows_JamVersion.exe
“The burrows are warm and safe for us mice. But that was before the disastrous deluge that began flooding our homes. The only thing to do is find our way out or suffer an underground, watery grave at the hands of the liquid death. How many of us will survive this disaster?” —the mice.
DevLog
Entry 1
There’s one day and 4 hours left at the time of me writing this. I brushed off the first day and did nothing. About four hours into the second day, I started my project. That would be around 9:00pm, my timezone (PST). I already had this idea, but I was a bit unsure of the details. After struggling with whether to try a different idea, I decided to stick with this one.
I was able to create the player mouse with several simple animation frames. I also created some of the other sprites I needed. I’ve elected to use Icuurd’s platform engine, but I’m having trouble implementing some of the mechanics I want for the game. I should have done a little practice before the jam. This rustiness with GML is slowing my progress.
I worked last night until I couldn’t stay awake any longer, about 2am. I got to the point of just sitting here, staring at the computer screen, trying to remember what it was I was about to do next. Being way too tired, I decided to start my log and entry post the next day, and I went to bed.
This morning, I woke up, showered, coffee’ed, and resumed production. I’m struggling with platform mechanics, my code is sloppy, but I feel like I am making progress. I must finish this thing tonight because I have to work tomorrow.
Here’s a screenie of what I have so far…
Entry 2
Eighteen hours and 40 minutes to go. I’ve finally got most of the mechanics worked out, and much of the graphics. I have a HUD system working, too (no text!). I gotta figure out how to explain the game. I need to create some levels. Also, credits, opening, polish, blah blah blah. It’s gonna be a late night, and I’m gonna be tired for work in the morning. (Darn you, GMC Jam!! See what you do to me??)
New screenie….
Entry 3
Eleven hours to go. I still have credits, sounds, music, and maybe another level or two to throw at this thing. I dunno if I can finish, but I’ll give it my best.
Here’s part of my title screen:
Didn’t finish in time. Bummer.
GMC MODERATOR EDIT: Yes you did!!!!
Entry 4 (Nov 12, 2012)
Thanks, MOD! 🙂
Well, once again, I entered an unfinished game into the Jam. I suppose there was enough there to show the idea, though. But still, that’s not good enough.
After two weeks of playing and reviewing Jam 8 games, mixed in with real life, I’ve now begun to continue work on Deluge.
First thing I did was scrapped the platform engine I was using. (No offense, Icuurd. Your engine is quite nice, but I wasn’t able to make it work well with my game.) I found another engine in the GMC examples and tutorials threads, and went to work implementing it into my game.
With a little bit of adjusting and manipulating the code, I was able to eradicate the collision bugs from my Jam release version. Oh happy day! Along the way, I made some color adjustments to some of the graphics to give it a better underground feel.
This new engine didn’t have pushable blocks for my rocks, so I worked and worked at figuring that out. In the process, I learned A LOT about the platform engine I chose and how movement and collisions are coded.
I finally worked out the pushable block, and it is working great, but the coding I came up with for it seems pretty wonky. Oh well, it works.
I also made it so the mouse can “swim” in the water. It’s essentially a double-jump code with no limits while under water. Thanks to TheUltimate for the “swimming” suggestion.
I then incorporated the rest of the old game resources into the new version. The sticks, the cheese, the rising water and the rain drops, etc., etc.
I fixed and finished the stat screen that pops up between levels that I was unable to include for the Jam version. I also fixed up and playtested 6 levels. I arranged and coded the game flow and now it’s playable from the opening intro to the ending credits, WITH NO GAME BREAKING BUGS!! Woo!
However, I now have a minor sticky-wall glitch and a not-so-minor falling rock glitch/annoyance to work out. I think a few more levels would be good also, a tutorial, and perhaps a menu screen.
Deluge is on it’s way to being my first completed game!
I’m posting this from my phone right now. Later tonight after work, I’ll post a few new screenies and a link to the current executable. 🙂
Entry 5 (Nov 12,2012) 🙂
Here’s the latest version (at beginning and end of this post) and some new screenies, as promised. I was able to quickly fix the falling-rock problem before creating the executable. It was just a collision mask problem. The mask was too wide.
New Screenies:
Entry 6: (Nov 15, 2012)
Sorry about that last release. I thought I uploaded a newer version. I was diligently working away at the game and uploading to here at the same time or something. Slow down, HayMan, slow down.
Anyway, the new link is posted. This time the game is playable from beginning to end, and WON’T break when you die. (Thanks for finding that bug, chance.) I still need to fix the credits to credit Canite’s engine instead of Icuurd’s.
I fixed up the music a bit. I added a song. The two songs will take turns playing during the game.
I’ll post more later. I gotta go or I’ll be late for work!
Entry 6 – continued:
Actually, there is one game-breaking bug, but it only happens when you button-jam. Like, making a mistake and going too far over the edge and falling. If you’re button-jamming trying to get back on that ledge, even though you’re obviously too late, the character sprite sticks to the wall and the whole game freezes. Ctrl-Alt-Del is the only way out. Major bug, yes, but uncommon.
Also, I’m looking for better sound fx if anyone has any suggestions.
Entry 7 (Nov 19,2012) early AM
I just keep plugging away at this thing. It is slowly getting there and I am slowly gaining more knowledge. I feel like I’ve barely done anything since my last update, but it’s because I had to spend time studying, learning, trying, re-trying, re-learning, trying something else,….until I finally managed to get it right. It’s a long and windy road.
The first thing I did was try to create a ripple effect with the rising water. I thought I could create something in GIMP, so that’s where I started. With GIMP, I put a semi-transparent texture on top of the blue water sprite (the sprite that rises during the game), to make it look kinda like underwater light reflections. I then put it through a ripple effect animation. I then imported the gif into the game in place of the old water sprite. It looked ‘okay’ but not great. Hell, not even good. So I decided to look for something else.
I found shm31’s Underwater Ripple Engine in the tutorial/example threads. It looked pretty neat in the example, so I began to transpose it into my game. Doing so took a good 2 days of figuring out the code and screwing around with it. I finally found a little more help in a related thread that put me on the road to success. After many trials, I finally got it working. No more ugly semi-transparent water sprite!
Next, I had to update the credits to include this new engine. This was easy, and a nice break from racking my brain on something new. I was also able to take a break by fixing the transparency problem in the raindrops.
With a sense of accomplishment, I decided now was a good time to set out to fix the “sticky wall freeze bug”. This was my last known gameplay bug and I really wanted to kill it. To my delight, I was able to do so pretty quickly, thanks to my newfound knowledge with collisions.
Now I was feeling really good and confident, so I dove into a brand new territory. I wanted to shave the enormous file size of Deluge, so I decided to try a music DLL or GEX. I’ve never used a DLL or GEX file. I had no idea, really, what to do with it. So I spent the last 20 hours figuring it out. In a nutshell, I looked at several different DLL’s, narrowed it down to 3, tried out all three because I was able to get the third one to work the closest to what I wanted. I still don’t have what I want, but it’s really close. I wanted to use OGG files since OGG is a free format. So I started with Caster. It worked pretty good, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the music to change to a new song. After a long time trying to get it to work, I threw it out (for now) and tried GumBass. After much due diligence, I managed to get this to work. The only thing I don’t have is fading out the music at the end of the credits. Personally, I need this. So this battle is not over.
After I get an OGG music DLL to work, I’m gonna have to update the credits again. I’m thinking about creating a menu screen. I want a voice clip of the description. I need better/more sound FX. And I need to time-tune the intro. There’s probably more, but that’ll do for now.
Speaking of the intro, I added a ‘spacebar’ check in order to skip past. Your welcome, Ultimate. 😉
So the latest download has the game exe, two OGG files, and a DLL file — all neatly zipped into one big folder. And the size? 17.8MB! I dropped 64.4 enormous megabytes!!!
New screenshot:
Latest Version! (as of Nov 19, 2012) No bugs!
DOWNLOAD: DelugeRedo_010_exe