Is there a good way to handle a lives system in a game, or should the idea be dropped completely? I'm aware it's a dated mechanic but it legitimately increased difficulty and made up for easier level design. Can it be improved or is it useless?
Just copy the lives system of your favorite game with lives, baka
Leo Murphy
The real question is: What's the punishment of running out of lives? I think interesting gimmicks can come from running out of lives if the lives system is implemented. Tell me more about your game
Lives are just one way to create a punishment to death which can persist between attempts.
If you respawn at a close checkpoint after dying, and keep dying over and over, you can become numb to it. If you die 4 times and know that on your next death you'll game over and get sent further back, it's motivation.
You can do that with other stuff instead if it makes sense.
Xavier Rogers
>but it legitimately increased difficulty and made up for easier level design. So compensating for your bad design?
Camden Lewis
Lives just make a game more annoying to play. It forces you to replay earlier parts of the game just because a later part might be hard.
I like having occasional checkpoints in a level. Shovel Knight and Dark Souls do this well. There's usually a checkpoint after a big difficult challenge, then you move on to the next big challenge. Of course don't have the checkpoints too close. If the player dies they still need to be sent back a ways. Having another punishment for death is good as well, like the dropping of treasure in Shovel Knight.
Easton Bennett
the horst wessel
Gavin Adams
For about 9 months. Though it was on 700 dl's before the latest demoday.
Bentley Powell
I personally believe that the concept of secret curves and variables handling game difficulty and other aspects are the fuuuture. >difficulty (number of enemies and environmental hazards) = 1 >more deaths during part x (with a part being an enemy encounter or boss fight) = game difficulty toned down by .1 >winning the shit out of part x while having lost not so many items and health = difficulty rises by .2 >surviving part x with your ass almost getting handed to you on a silver plate = difficulty rises by a lower value between .1 and .2 >after each part, every next part esponentially increments difficulty both to an external value and to a customized one This is called dynamic difficulty, you've already seen it either like this or in more plain and basic aspects (the chicken hat in MGSV for example). With the right data collected, a malleable task automatically given to the player for maximum enjoyment and challenge according to their skill level is way better and more satisfying. Infinite or finite lives by themselves can make games too much of a cakewalk or too frustrating. This is a potential fix.
Oliver Bell
>It forces you to replay earlier parts of the game just because a later part might be hard. You mean exactly like areas in Dark Souls? You're the one assuming that he's talking about a system where running out of lives means restarting the entire game, when running out of lives could simply mean restarting a level or segment.
Landon Collins
It's only annoying if you're bad
Bentley Cruz
synthwave, it's so bad.
but it's so damn good.
Alexander Cruz
Wtf are you talking about dark souls forces you to replay earlier parts of many sections if you die BECAUSE your saving at checkpoints and have to travel away from them.
Joshua Powell
Oh that's really good.
Ian Ross
How is this better than allowing the player to choose their difficulty level?
Nolan Jackson
Done with the healing items for the moment. Mana potions are Syringes Stamina potions are pills And health potions are surgical field kits
Maybe going to use this thing as a high tier med kit instead of the regular healing potion, but for the moment I'll probably work on the torch/lamp system.
I still hold my position that lives and continues are great for level based games, sprinkle some checkpoints through the level for respawning when dying, but when you're out of lives, tough luck, back to the start.
Ryan Reed
Quality stuff.
Landon Bailey
Good god, how are you so bad at this? Also, why are you using those lines, instead of animation cones?
Jack Thompson
tl;dr
Jose Wright
Looks great! How did you learn to do materials? Any good tutorial?
Andrew Price
>reading a video
Charles Rodriguez
Theoretically: >adjusts the whole game to a single, universal setting, fit for the player >makes the experience smoother >saves the shitty player from throwing his controller through the wall because the game's too hard >greets the good player with a higher level of challenge than harder modes could've ever done and satisfies him Pratically: >saves you time from having to "design" other difficulties >the first stage can act as an universal litmus test without having the tutorial, judging each player blindly and justly >doesn't have the shitty player frantically have to restart or constantly change from difficulty x to y in the menus Cons: >may take more time to design what's going behind the screen Looks very good, user, althought the leather strips holding the objects look too smooth IMHO.
Camden Adams
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Ayden Cooper
Dynamic Difficulty is fucking stupid.
I always feel like I'm getting punished for doing well.
Julian Williams
Multiplayer Home Alone
One player sets traps, others try to break in and catch him
Tyler Cook
I could get behind this if it meant that enemies would up their tactics and learn from what I do. Fuck it if it just gives them more health and makes them hit harder.
Nolan Rogers
How about you take a look at Castledoctrine?
Grayson Walker
>How did you learn to do materials?
I'm mostly using substance painter these days, smashing together masks and smart materials. But I guess what it really comes down to is having a defined high poly mesh for the normals (multiresolution with edge crease is often enough for that, don't need any kinds of sculpts - maybe some displacement mapping for detail like in the middle part of the leather) and the rest is pretty much procedural masking via curvature maps. Substance is particularly good for that, because not only does it all of this relatively fast and automatically, but looking at the maps it bakes it actually becomes clear how to do these things manually, if you really wanted that.
Substance designer (which is actually the more powerful of the two programms) plus its tutorials also give you a lot of information on how to do these things. Most materials are basically just Grunge Maps + a couple of relatively well known image processing filters (blur, histogram etc) and layering techniques (addition, multiplication etc). SD is just a node editing tool to put these things together.
Hunter Green
>punishing the player for doing well >rewarding the player for doing poorly >not allowing the player the chance to naturally improve, rather insulting them by forcing them to continue to play through a worse version of the game instead of overcoming a hurdle that would have made the rest of the game more enjoyable for them >player forced to always perform to spec all the time or watch their gameplay experience be ruined automagically >implying you can balance "fun" around variable game difficulty correctly while AAA devs are constantly ruining their game designs with Hard mode user I'm sorry but no.
Robert Hernandez
Hi res into low poly + normals into substance painter? Looks good.
Nathan Gutierrez
What about that, but not 2D and with mixed reviews
A game, where the players can interact with everything. Like Bad Neighbours, but with multiple orders of magnitude greater player freedom.
Ryan Lee
VERY exciting animation here.
Jace Green
When someone Molyneux posts, do you imagine the game is 2D or 3D?
I always go 3D because I usually don't care for making nor playing 2D games.
Parker Gutierrez
always 2d because I assume every 3d indie game looks like shit. The worst are the non-stylized indie 3d games.
Nathaniel Brooks
Whatever Pete posts, I always see Godus.
Eli James
Depends on the game
Jose Hall
...
Aaron Turner
pussy destroyer
Carter Cooper
he looks more like a ball gargler
Hudson Stewart
That's pretty impressive.
Joseph Sanchez
Made a following illusion effect, but something feels off.
Aaron Nelson
Sorry, was away from the computer.
I feel like that's a cheap cop-out, honestly.
That's a good question. The punishment definitely wouldn't be restarting the whole game like Mario Bros 1. Maybe restart the stage like in the original castlevania? My game takes heavy inspiration from classic castlevania. But I don't want to just copy the system used.
Love me some Mark Brown. I'm pretty sure I've seen this a while ago but I'll definitely rewatch this as he usually has good analysis.
That is a very good point. I think spaced out checkpoints might be a good way to go about it to or have optional checkpoints a la Shovel Knight. That game had a wonderful death system.
No yes, that was just an example even though I'm not good at level design. I just feel like without some sort of punishment, a game could become too easy.
Good points, but I don't think Dark Souls did this will either as if you die before finding a bonfire, you need to retrek and it's even more annoying considering the game's difficulty.
I'm not a fan of dynamic difficulty as it rewards you for playing poorly and punishes for playing well.
I think that's gonna be my way to go, but not going back to the start of the game though. That's just frustrating.
Leo Diaz
all me
Jacob Walker
>My game takes heavy inspiration from classic castlevania
Heleton dev? Consider this: Game overing not only sends you back to the beginning of a stage, but takes your subweapon too, you could inflict some sort of other penalty as well if you really want to put the pressure on the player for fucking up, maybe make some monsters stronger or some shit.
Aaron Fisher
If you want to do it that way, you should; it's your game. But the idea that you need to impose limited lives on the player to make the game more difficult instead of actually making your game's intended challenge more difficult is not a good one.
Lincoln Hill
If the mercenary dev is here, I messaged you on reddit about your post plz respond
Ethan Murphy
it might have something to do with the fact that the globes of the eyes are flat instead of spherical
Landon Torres
How about a game that rewards you no matter what !
you play bad - you get rewarded
play good ? - rewarded
Adam Morales
thank you for all your replies user
>Heleton dev? Yep! Maybe I'll also make them play the stage upside down and backwards if they die too much, and also disable the jump button.
I agree with what you're saying. I'm just not sure how challenging is too challenging, or even how to successfully design legitimately challenging sections without just throwing too much shit at the player and frustrating them. Castlevania was brilliant (outside of medusa head spam) with how it handled difficulty and I'm having a difficult time dissecting it.
Leo King
thats overwatch
Jeremiah Rodriguez
Maybe not take it to such extremes, it could be something simple too, like your Skeleton guy loses his hat and can't upgrade to the bone fist until he gets it back because video games. Something like that.
Then again there's nothing wrong with just simply kicking the player back to the beginning of a stage.
Asher Murphy
fresh progress, hot off the press.
Xavier Richardson
making them spherical made it worse
Colton Adams
Maybe the depth is the issue, everything should be flat
Christopher Evans
make them convex not concave and make the irises concave.
Jace Sullivan
>Hi res into low poly + normals into substance painter? yep
Caleb Brown
The way Westerado handled it was pretty good. You have three hats. When you get hit, you lose your hat. If you have no hat left and get hit, you die (respawning at set location with loss of some $). You can buy new hats or shoot a hat off an enemy's head, then picking up that shot hat. This rewards you with extra lives when you show special accuracy and skill.
Of course that and your game's genre have little overlap, but I think it's a good alternative to be inspected.
Joshua Rivera
indiana jones ?
Grayson Wilson
Well for one thing there should be no shading and there should be no dots on the front of them.
Brayden Jackson
risk of rain?
Luke Richardson
>tfw still no idea how to make a fucking inventory send help
Logan Evans
What's the right way of lumping all collidable static objects (with the player in this case) under a single identifier in Game Maker? Don't want to type if (colliding with a wall or a slope or a blah blah) every single time.
William Richardson
and yet for some reason i keep getting closer and closer to that silver bracket.
I guess I suck at games.
Luke Myers
Technical or design issue?
Carson Gutierrez
It's just...like...put the objects in a container man.
Brayden Perez
Is it just me or is the sprite flipped off-center?
Kevin Garcia
Alright, I think some ideas are finally beginning to flow. Thank you very much for the insight. Hopefully I'll be able to implement death in a way that isn't just frustrating.
Lucas Ward
nah it's not
Jeremiah Murphy
Technical, I don't know how to store the reference to the item after it gets picked up and destroyed from the world. Maybe I should not destroy them and just disable them.
Samuel Phillips
Yeah, just disable it.
Dominic Miller
You have two practical choices: make them solid (broken) or give them all the same parent (which locks you out of this doing this for anything else). Otherwise you can give every single object a custom marker variable like solid but then you're checking every object for collision and you could run into performance issues.
Have fun :)
Isaiah Rivera
...
Brody Clark
Yeah, I was specifically trying to avoid using the Solid property. I'll look into Game Maker inheritance then, thanks. Just one thing, I won't have any problems with different collision masks for every child object will I?
Nathan Rogers
Progress!
Added a new monster, spiders. They are faster and more chaotic. Improved monster script system a bit, it is easier to add monsters now.
Added a stun/slow to monsters you hit.
Bullet trail improvements and a few other things.
Will try to release a demo next week.
Elijah Cox
No, that's fine.
Gavin Thomas
Will this LD have a good theme?
Aaron Garcia
that didn't work thanks I don't how to turn off shading
