on July 22
Right now most of my free time is spent not coding things for DSE, but rather designing them. I built the engine to be pretty flexible and modular. Because of this building the game is relatively easy. But game design is different then regular coding because the focus is not on the functionally but rather on the player experiences. This is what most game clones fail to do. They may perfectly replicate the core mechanics of an engine but fail to miss the bits that make the game special.
Lets take a practical example. Let's make an enemy that fly in from a position, hovers for 1/2 a second, fires an energy burst at the player, hovers for 1 second, and then retreats. We'll now give it a working title of Imp.
The first thing the engine must do is create the Imp When and Where I need it to so I set up an event to create while the Player is fighting the second wave of another enemy, but always is in a fairly predictable spot. Next I program the Imp to behave the way we want it to which simple. I create a fireball that can damage the player and some some visual effects to give the game some polish. I then test to see if the thing works as expected and fix as need. After I iron out the bugs I now have a functioning enemy but it needs to go somewhere.
This in not what the design processed is about. This is just simple logic and has not considered the effects of this Imp. This enemy will require the player to focus farther away from their player character and be more sure of the controls. Putting this enemy on the first level would be ill advised because it makes the player dodge the attack and then take aim at it, which on the first level the player my still be trying to learn how the movement mechanic works.
If your a budding game designer see how increasing the players speed by 20% and see how this changes the gameplay. Then decrease the speed by 20% and see how this changes the feel of the game. As a designer you must be very aware of the player's perception.
Looking at the Imp example again lets say we use it on level 2. Its a fairly simple enemy so it definitely fits here. Then should we use it on the Final Level. No. By the time the player is on the final level their skill at this game with have risen considerably, and they may not have even realized it. If you start bringing back simple enemy the player will more then likely have notice. It makes the game look more slapdash and makes the player feel like they have defeated the game to early. Winning the game should be a feeling of pride accomplishment that the player feels after a challenge. If the game has resorted to throwing anything it can find at the player this is more likely to give the player a feeling of smugness and arrogance. This is only one thing to consider when building a game, there's still much more to consider.
on July 14
Well I promised you a name for this work in progress and here it is! Dragon Soul Eternal. If your wondering where the name came from or what it means, that will be explained better when I start posting a better draft of the story. For now here's a taste. A long time ago the land was ruled and cared for by a race of being known as the dragons. The dragons life force made up a power known as the soul, and with this soul they could protect and serve the people they watched over. Over time humans became more self reliant and begin to show the spark of soul in themselves. The dragons power had begun to become part of the people they cared for. So the dragons decided to let the people's power grow on it's own and left the world to the humans. But over time what remained of the dragon soul in the humans began to fade. As the power faded away the world grew weak. Eventually the world began to crack, and in the void a great evil began force it's way into our world. Little hope is left but for her Majesty of Flames, the only one able to wield enough of the dragon soul to force back the evil so that the world can be healed. That's a rough draft of the story so far. There are various other things that will be explained in time. for now checkout the current verison of the engine. Still trying to balance vfx, fps, and the shear number of bullets on screen. There's now a Page just for DSE so check it out. and after your done that dont forget to look at "Some Flash Stuff" for neat little flash animations.
On june 4th:
Im current working on a game. it's about time I mean I havent produced a full game in about 2 weeks. Here a link to my last game: Walrus Balloon Ride Right now I've uploaded a .swf from my current project. I haven't really debugged it fully yet because I haven't found any GBG ( Game Breaking Glicths) so it more of a raw game engine at the moment.
Zont's Introduction. I saved it here