For all you paleo geeks out there, I’m making my first game based on an idea for a graphic novel involving the Permian Extinction event, aka the Great Dying. My player is a young Inostrancevia gorgonopsid. So far, I’ve been working on the first level, which is more of an introductory corse where you get used to the game controls. I recently fixed an issue where my player was jumping way off screen too much, now he jumps a normal height. I’m still having trouble controlling his movements and the way he collides with objects. The fact that this is a quadraped makes it more challenging. The only game I know to compare it to is The Lion King games. Of course, he has a different gait than most modern mammals.
At the moment, I haven’t made it so that enemy collisions or jumping in water (which is solid, need advice on that, too) don’t take any damage because I don’t want to worry about him dying until I figure out how all other mechanisms work. There is a health bar, but it doesn’t do anything atm. There’s also a number indicating the number of dragonflies he collects, the only collectable item so far. Any other ideas for items? I thought maybe I could make so that when he kills certain enemies, certain items such as meat drops. That’s the case with the baby scutosaurus anyway. I also need to figure out how to add dialogue to the game if possible, so he can interact with NPCs. For example, at the end of the 1st level he go to him mom, she talks to him, and drops a special piece of meat which spawns out of nowhere, giving him an extra life. That’s where the 1st level is supposed to end. I was even wondering if I can do cutscenes, but I don’t know if this game maker has limitations.
Back to mechanics. When he jumps, he can jump in mid air as if he were trying to fly. I’m no paleontologist, but I’m pretty sure gorgonopsids couldn’t jump like that. I put logs in front of the large scutosaurus so he can jump over them, because the spikes on their backs take damage on contact (though at the moment they’re harmless). In fact, I want to make it so he can’t touch them at all without being damaged (for now, until later levels when he gets bigger). I just need him to be able to take down a baby scutosaurus, so I also gave him a bite attack (x). The problem with that is getting close enough to bite his enemies without being damaged. There’s also an issue, which you can almost tell right away, where when he walks he gets stopped by nothing. For this, I just make him go back a little, then move him forward, then he’s no longer stuck until the next time it may happen again.
It would probably be easier for you to see for yourself by test playing it for me, but I’m not sure how that’s possible. For now, I’m making it free to play, but I don’t know if people can see it yet. If it is, I’m open to feedback, constructive criticism only please! Does it look good? Do I need to make any changes to the design?
One last thing, the background layers keep getting jumbled in the wrong order. The darkest plants go to the back while the light green plants stay in front of the bushes. How do I fix it so it stays that way every time I exit?
Let me know if the link works. I’ll get back to 'yall when I can.
Hey @Amber_Kelliher - I think this is an interesting project, thanks for posting it, and welcome to the forums
Your game is public and accessible, so anyone can see or play it. I like the level of detail in your artwork, and the overall theme and backstory you have so far.
I think you are on the right track by starting small and working on things bit by bit. I have a few suggestions:
For the layering, you have a couple of options - you can use the “display order” setting in each object to select which objects display in which order (higher values display on top of lower ones), or you can add your background objects to the “Background” Layer. You can select which layer you are working in using the “Layer” button in the bottom toolbar.
To prevent double-jumping, you can add a switch to the jump button that only enables after touching the ground, or enables with a Raycast. There are lots of examples and discussions about this on the forum.
The main player is using a “polygon” collider, which tends to snag on the ground blocks easily and prevent your player from moving forward. I suggest trying the “capsule” collision shape to help eliminate this problem.
Thanks for the feedback! Very encouraging. I will try out your suggestions and see if they work. Definitely gonna check out more forums on the same issues.
Dunno if this is a dead horse going back to this post but I’m still having issues despite that I’m making progress.
Where to start… I made a running animation, but I wanted to make it so that he does it while I press a button and hold down the arrow key. But when I do that, he just gets stuck on the first frame of the running sequence while moving, appearing rather weird. It’s the same with the bite attack. I’d like to make it so he can bite as he moves forward. When I just hold down C the full animation plays, but he’s staying in one place. This probably shouldn’t be that complicated, but I’m a newb so there’s still a lot to figure out.
As you can see, I’ve made a second level already. Dunno if I’m getting ahead of myself here, but it’s a good thing I did get started on Level 2 because I’m starting to find out some things about changing levels that make things harder. I wanted to include one of the NPCs, who originally appeared at the end of the first level, at the beginning of level 2, but when I did that she kept appearing again in the same spot as she was in the previous level. Sometimes she would appear at the beginning at Level 1, but she was meant to appear once per level (just those first two) I decided to just delete the character from both levels for now. One thing I’m curious about is how to make the screen move. You know how in some side-scrolling games, some levels will keep moving the platform to the right, forcing the player to hurry, like in Super Mario Land 2? I was wondering if it was possible to pull that off. And if not, I thought about using a timer for Level 2, so that if the time runs out before he reaches the end, the player dies. I tried figuring it out on my own, but with no success.
At least I found a temporary solution to dialogue exchange, though I’ve thought of a better but more tedious way of doing it. Would still like to figure out the best way to do cutscenes (could probably just do my dialogue script that way), title sequence, etc. He still jumps on air like a god, though not as high at least. And one last thing I need to figure out: water. I made the water as a solid moving object, but he needs to be able to get in it, at least to sink. Otherwise, it might as well be ice. Now I could just make it shallow water, but I wanted it to be an obstacle to make the game a slightly more challenging. It’s the same with lava. He just walks right on top of it. Still haven’t worked enough on the health meter yet, but I did try to make it so that when he at least touches fire, it shows -4 or something at the top. I think I may have done that wrong, but I might be able to figure that out on my own.
I just need to know how to do the timer or moving side-scroller, liquid, and running (probably involves a Switch, right?)
P.S. I decided to experiment with making other games, and I tried making an aerial platform view version of The First Sabertooths. Which do you think would work better, the side-scroller or the other form? I’ll put a link below, but I haven’t done much with it.
[https://flowlab.io/game/play/1558234]
