It's time to start tying up the loose ends with the Platformer. This week we're going to be making the Menu a bit better as part of just rounding through the game applying a coat of polish.
Starting off with mouse controls and probably an actual title for the title screen.
Probably an ending or something at some point too.
-S
2018-03-29 15:33:36 +0000 UTC View PostPokeyPoke retrospective is done! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and with that plate firmly spinning or... spun, if you will, it's time to get back to the ever wobbling Platformer series plate and THEN back around to the Patron Topic (wall jumps) plate.
Whew!
As I've said before, the platformer is on its way to wrapping up for "season 1". If there's stuff you really want to make ...
2018-03-26 14:43:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Really happy with how this part turned out, goes over more of the general process involved in building the thing across a couple of days and some reflection on specific design problems and the time constraints of the jam.
I think I will release this one this coming Friday rather than leaving YouTube empty another week just to get the ball properly rolling again.
-S
2018-03-21 19:11:13 +0000 UTC View PostPlans and plans and plans:
Winner of the poll from last week was "Walljumps with momentum". In other words, tackling the awkward problems that arise when implementing a wall jump that most beginner level tutorials (my own included) tend to gloss over. Acceleration vs Fixed speed and how to balance exactly how your wall jump behaves and what it allows your players to accomplish.
BUUUT. First of all, I still have a PokeyPoke retrospective part to finish. S...
2018-03-19 17:53:52 +0000 UTC View PostICYMI, Platformer episode 15 went up for $5+ supporters: https://www.patreon.com/posts/platformer-part-17477136
Also for $5+ supporters, a new topic poll was just announced: https://www.patreon.com/posts/topic-poll-5-17509691
The week that was:
Platformer 15 dialed things up anothe...
2018-03-12 14:33:45 +0000 UTC View PostIt's that time again!
I've kept the more popular options from before, and I know by now lots of you are happy just to see the platformer continue so I will keep doing that at a 1:1 pace with these videos.
Two new options:
Day later than I'd hoped but whatcanyado.
Live next Friday, itch.io project is up to date with new source code.
For "Homework" see if you can make some kind of symbol that tells you if you're close enough to read the sign?
Hf!
-S
2018-03-10 17:26:38 +0000 UTC View Post
These could certainly be fancier than they are, but it's been a lot of work trying to get it simple enough for a single part that explains all the fundamentals. This might be something we revisit to make even better in a "second season" of this series or something.
Despite what I said monday I'm going to leave running the next poll until next week when I've had a bit more time to consider future topics. Next week's video is likely to be the second Pokey retrospective.
2018-03-07 13:39:09 +0000 UTC View PostHello!
New pledges confirmed:
It's the start of a new month and therefore payments have been processing, if you want to make sure you're in the credits as appropriate you need to make sure your payment has definitely gone through. A few new pledgers last month have departed after their payment, presumably intending it as like a one-time donation towards my video work. Not that those people will be notified about this post, but just FYI doing this will mean you still get...
2018-03-05 13:45:03 +0000 UTC View PostHello! Gosh there's a lot of snow here. Me and a fellow developer (Tommy Thompson, working on Sure Footing.) have been delivering cool game workshops for kids at the Norwich Gaming Festival.
One of them followed the adventures of the class mascot chicken which even lead to a bizarro trailer: https://twitter.com/Norw...
2018-02-28 11:51:35 +0000 UTC View Post
So I was struggling with this piece for a while, and decided to cut out a lot of what I had made and break this down into one concrete piece about the spear and player and how the hanging and stabbing and core guts of the game works.
The video was becoming a mish mash of technical stuff and design challenges and overall a pretty unfocused mess. So I trimmed it down to this mostly technical video and will likely do a second video talking about it from a design & jam constraints stand point....
2018-02-23 18:04:23 +0000 UTC View PostTL;DR: PokeyPoke video still in the works. Due this Friday, then I'm away for a week in Norwich. \o/
Long Video Work vs Short Video Work
So I think I've made this distinction before of videos that I can make quickly and videos that take a long time.
The former tend to be videos that rely on:
1. Techniques I understand very well and have little research to do on.
2. Requiring very little beyond footage of the Thing Being Done.
Editing these togethe...
2018-02-19 15:32:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Having fun with this one but it looks like it won't make it out this week. Quite a lot more to do and I might end up splitting this one into two parts.
This first bit I'm doing revolves around the basic mechanics of the player and spear and how they work. It relies on a little bit of knowledge of platformers and state machines as covered in my videos on those topics.
2018-02-16 14:11:46 +0000 UTC View PostToday I put out some more of the GMMeetup videos. I haven't been to these meetups in a little while, time and money being as they are, but I'm still happily hosting the video footage of the many cool talks that are done there. I presume most of you here are subscribers, so check those out at your leisure!
Last week I put up another new Platformer part for you guys and ran a new 2018-02-12 16:01:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Dying!
It's a quick part, showing how we can re-use and combine the things we've made to quickly create new and pre-polished mechanics.
Source code uploaded to the usual page:
https://shaunjs.itch.io/shauns-complete-platformer-tutorial-series
I've literally just finished this upload as I write this, so if it's potato quality you might want to come back in an hour or so f...
2018-02-09 18:58:34 +0000 UTC View Post
This week we're mostly combining basic elements that we've already built to create Consequences™ in our game.
We're working towards tying up all the loose ends and making this a Finished Game whatever that means and then from there seeing how much more polish we can pour on top!
A few people have asked about lots of different mechanics for the platformer but they're likely not to be a part of this particular series which is focused on fundamentals and covering ALL of the bases. Fancy, ...
2018-02-08 17:05:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Source code available for all $5+ pledgers: https://shaunjs.itch.io/wave-spawner-tutorial (link at top)
Enjoy!
2018-02-05 16:21:42 +0000 UTC View PostWhat was and what is:
Last Friday's video is... still not up yet! It's rendering as we speak, I had to make a couple of corrections and update the credits now that this month's Patreon payments are in. Sorry for the delay! I would have put something out to let you know but I'm trying to really commit to an idea of cutting myself out from work entirely at weekends and in the evenings for my own mental health and general well-being.
A handful of declined payments thi...
2018-02-05 15:29:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Much of the work for this is already done, I created a system as part of a freelance consulting gig a while back. Now I can bring it to everybody!
Shut doors, trigger a set of waves, spawn each wave after the last has been defeated.
When all is done, open the doors!
Set up the waves using the instance create code of each spawner.
What was and what is:
So for those of you who are new/new-ish my unofficial "typical tutorial schedule" is that I release a video to $5+ supporters every Friday, then publically release the following Friday. The topics are ~~usually~~ in a pattern of 1 Platformer part, 1 Patron selected topic, repeat. With a poll running during the week I'm working on the platformer.
So if you're familiar with that or are just now working it out from the title of this post, whooops. I didn'...
2018-01-29 12:29:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Day later release than usual, sorry about that!
Full source code link is in the description along with the sound pack. Follow the link on the itch page to hook up your patreon account for free access.
See you guys Monday for the next weekly update.
2018-01-27 17:54:04 +0000 UTC View PostSorry this took so long to put together. I started my new "model" for source code after this series had begun and hadn't been tracking the source code for every part. So I've had to put each part back together from scratch and I'd been putting off doing so for a while. But now it's done!
https://shaunjs.itch.io/shauns-complete-platformer-tutorial-series
The Patreon access link for a...
2018-01-23 13:43:59 +0000 UTC View PostSo I guess it's (fairly) safe to say we hit the $1k goal! This is fantastic news and I guess that patreon ad video was well worth the time to make. So what does this functionally mean?
It means I can do this work long term. Until now I'd been eating at my savings or at best breaking even while I do this work. The only thing really filling the gap was high paying freelance gigs which are super few and far between. Since hitting around $6-800 I was already treating this as my full time gig a bit...
2018-01-22 13:53:46 +0000 UTC View Post
It's a long one! I decided to cover a complete solution for weapons and picking them up and firing them using a modular ds_map system.
This will be public next Friday, I've got a cute little timelapse to put up later today as well, which I won't announce here to spare your inboxes. I also opted in that particular video to not do the voice credits as it doesn't really fit that video (which otherwise has no voice-over and is really short and daft anyway).
This video is completely ad-free t...
2018-01-19 19:04:00 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm a little surprised this won the vote, but as it's a fairly simple topic I figure I can go a bit more "All in" with the video and present it with a lot of polish.
I'm setting up a system whereby you can use a data structure called a "ds map" to assign the properties of weapons, then simply swap between them on the fly. All in the context of a top down shooter thing.
Got a lot ahead of me to get this ready for Friday, but I'm feeling good about where this is going.
Source code fo...
2018-01-17 17:33:32 +0000 UTC View Post
What was:
GM48 Was awesome! I made a fun thing about using a spear to climb around an environment via the two mouse buttons and WSAD/Arrows. I'm sure you can spot all the influence my recent Mario Odyssey binge has had on this. The main idea was inspired by the pokio posession!
You can go play it here, but there's no tutorial or menu or anything (48hours, remember) so read the instructions on the page! They're very short I promise! 2018-01-15 14:44:21 +0000 UTC
View Post
I unlisted my old patreon explainer vids a while ago as they're really out of date. I've now got a new one!
Not much in here for you guys obviously, but just so you're up to date on what I've been up to. =)
2018-01-11 01:07:22 +0000 UTC View PostTL;DR Summary:
What was:
Last week I managed to just about finish another video, it helped that it was a short one but I continued the platformer series looking at parent objects + the new var definition system. That's live already for $5+ folk as you may have seen already and releases to ev...
2018-01-08 12:52:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Parenting and the new variable definition system explained! One week ahead for you cool kids, out next Friday for everyone else.
It turns out GM48 is next weekend! I'd quite like to try that and maybe stream it too. More info in Monday's update :)
You'll have noticed as well I still haven't published the source code for this stuff. I'll be compiling that together soon into one neat package so you can get each part's project files as and when needed.
Cheers!
-S
2018-01-05 19:59:56 +0000 UTC View Post
So GMS2 came out with a cool new feature recently that pretty much makes all of my videos technically a bit out of date! Hooray!
You can define variables using a... well... variable definition window attached to objects. This is awesome because it allows you to manipulate the variables in child objects in a simplified way and avoid having to make a create event + script for every new object full of variable definitions. (I should note that doing this still _works_ and is fine obviously.)