NewsForumsCodeLogsGallerySpecsSearch

So I started a Dev Vlog Diary.

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Projects/So I started a Dev Vlog Diary.

Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#1]
Current Issue 4.


Older Issues.

Vlog 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HujGTB5kcZE
Vlog 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUWSgZG84Us
Vlog 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8stZVfU1jPM
Vlog 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBalHBVL4sY
Vlog 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgv52nghTQY

-EDIT- I will update this post with each new episode rather than making a new thread.

Maybe it will help some one, or inspire some one who knows.
_____________________________________________________________________________

I plan to do one every week or possibly every two weeks, to track my progress with the game, if it goes well and does not take up to much time I will probably make this a regular thing for all my new projects.

Should be fun in a few months time to look back and see where things were when I started, and to see how things change from video to video.


therevills(Posted 2012) [#2]
Looks good Taiphoz... and the game looks great!


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#3]
Thanks mate, I have a real problem with motivation as a project gets closer to complete I lose all interest in it, so these dev diaries, and the stuff I post on the forums and to my blog about this game are all helping me keep focus, I am determined not to move onto anything else until this is done.


benmc(Posted 2012) [#4]
What are you using for the screen casting?


DruggedBunny(Posted 2012) [#5]
That was pretty good, keep doing them! Interesting to see the waypoints in action.


siread(Posted 2012) [#6]
Yeah, looking good man. Would love to see how you are creating the vectory backgrounds. :)


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#7]
Will show that in the next video, you wont be impressed I assure you lol.

By screen casting do you mean what am I using to capture the video ?, just fraps, and then windows live movie maker to put it together and upload to youtube.


Uncle(Posted 2012) [#8]
Does look good. Currently it looks like background is just for decoration, are you planning on having some areas which can't be flown over? Could make the game more challenging if the players path can sometimes be restricted.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#9]
Yeah the background / level is a ground , something your flying over, the first target is mobile and navigating tight spaces could be tricky with the finger.

When I have the game in RC condition for mobile I am going to fork it for PC and Xbox, at that point I will add 2 new layers to the levels, a collision layer on the same layer as the ship flys, and an overhead layer which will allow me to make it look like the ship is flying under stuff.

I could probably do the over head layer on mobile as well..

What I am really missing is a good collision routine, I miss imagescollide and its pixel collisions, it means that collision detection in this is just based on spheres, or distance, I could use rects checking for overlapping for the tiles but then all tiles would need to be the full size of the tile, or I would have to make up some kinda ini/data file holding a list of rects to check against for each tile.

All in all annoying to code and tbh not really essential to the gameplay, at least not on the mobile.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#10]
Log 2 created and added to the top post.


therevills(Posted 2012) [#11]
Cool! Shame you ran out of time ;)

How are you playing the sounds? Since you are using diddy, there is a SoundPlayer class which helps with the channels. So you should be doing something like this:

Load the sound into the sound bank:
sounds.Load("lazer")


Set the sound in the bank to a variable in a screen for example:
	Field lazer:GameSound

	Method New()
		name = "Game"
		lazer = game.sounds.Find("lazer")
	End


Then play the sound like this:

lazer.Play()


Of course you dont need to store it in a variable and you can do it this way:
game.sounds.Find("lazer").Play()


But I thought it was better the previous way, since Monkey doesnt have to "find" the sound everytime you want to play it.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#12]
Yeah thats what I am doing but it's still struggling to play all the sounds.

My Player class has the shoot shound, and my alien class has the hit sound both as fields in the class and on new I load/find the appropriate sound.

then I just as you say do Player.ShootSound.Play()

But it's still sucky in terms of channels and amount of sound able to play, I think I am just at the moment trying to play far to many sounds far to quickly your system cant keep up. or actually is just running out of channels before the first sound that was played gets to finish.

EDIT - 1

Yeah looking at the sound example in diddy, I am consuming those 5 or 6 allowed active sound channels at any given time , My rate of fire is really fast so those 6 channels get eaten in just over a second leaving long gaps in fire with no sound.

Is there a way with diddy to force it to play by stopping the sound thats next in the queue so to say!.

EDIT - 2

Having a look at the framework I see you have IsPlaying() so currently using that to make sure I am not trying to play over the top of a sound thats already being played.

Kinda works there are still some fighting between the shot sound and the hit sound, but its much better than before.

I noticed as well that Flash does not support this , your framework comment at least has flash return 0 ?


Uncle(Posted 2012) [#13]
I enjoyed watching your second video :) Please keep em coming. Im loving the vector art work too.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#14]
I'm going to make a Steampunk themed level for stage 5 after being inspired recently, I plan to video that whole process.

Not sure if it will be part of the next dev diary tho might make it on its own.


therevills(Posted 2012) [#15]
Looks like you are doing sound correct, but Monkey's sound system still needs a lot of work. For the time being I would reduce the number of sounds you are playing - or if you come up with an uber fix let us know ;)


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#16]
Yeah if I manage to come up with a good method for controlling game sound I will post it for others to use cos it deff seems like an area where monkey could really use some work.

@unlce and on topic I made a very long video of me doing a full level but the video failed to compress and save and I lost it :( I might try again for the next level tho I doubt it will be ready for the next video, cos Im currently working on sound and particles.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#17]
Issue 3 added.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#18]
issue 4 added.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#19]
Issue 5.


Neuro(Posted 2012) [#20]
I just watched the latest issue with the youtube closed caption turned on. It was quite interesting Taiphoz :).


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#21]
OH HOLY GOD HAHAHAHAHHA..

that's the funnies thing I have seen all day, it even beats the vandalized go compare add I just saw.

I had never tried that cc button till now, I think I might try it some more for the giggles.

Is my accent really that hard for some to understand ? I will need to try harder to speak with a fake English or American accent.


Neuro(Posted 2012) [#22]
Lol, yeah if i was going strictly by the captions, i would of have thought you were plotting to go to war against the church of England or something lol :).

Speaking from an American ear, i can actually understand you fairly well but i will admit there are a few times that i kinda didn't quite catch what you were saying :).
I will need to try harder to speak with a fake English or American accent.

Actually i would be interested in seeing you do one with an American accent :)!