shaunjs

Platformer Slope Tiles

It's here! Sorry there was no early release for you guys on this one, but I was lucky to even finish in time for today.

I'll be sending a mass message shortly giving $5+ patrons free access to the final source code at https://shaunjs.itch.io/shauns-platformer

Everybody else can either get the code for free assuming they're willing to follow the tutorial, or they can pay $2+ to get immediate access.

Slopes Tutorial out tomorrow!

Whew! I pulled it off but it's a doozy at 51 minutes.

Don't be too intimidated by its length, the system is actually relatively straightforward it just has a few gotchas and moving parts that have to be explained so that it is used correctly as it's very easy to mess up on this one! For advanced programmers I'd like to put together a gif or short <1 minute video that just explains the _concept_ so that people don't have to sit through the longer explanations.

It'd be a shame to keep ...

Slopes Progress Round 2

So I think I finally got something I'm happy to put in a video. Will need to go over everything but the plan is to start scripting tomorrow unless a big issue crops up. Chopping back to basics so I'm cutting the stuff that handles bigger collision masks and ultra high move speeds etc as they're not necessary or super relevant. I want this video clean and focused.

There's situations this won't handle but they can all be dealt with through either writing extra code to deal with them or more prac...

WorkWorkWork

Doing my best to keep you guys up to date on my work and where I'm at:

Tribal Tension - Local Multiplayer!

 Very recently as a result of the GameMaker meetup I talked about last week, I got in touch with another developer who I've hired to work on my twitch game Tribal Tension!

Well, he's not working directly on the game, but is creating a backend + server system that will effectively give the game local multiplayer! The idea is that the game will be shown on ...

London GameMaker Meetup + Updates

So on Tuesday night this week I went to the very first GameMaker Meetup, hosted by Quang of AsobiTech (MaoMao Castle), Juju Adams and Jupiter Hadley in London!

Talks were given by Jupiter, ...

Slopes update

So the worst news is I won't be able to finish the slopes video for this week. I'm still not in a position where I have something I'm happy to record let alone edit. I'm not going to promise next Friday either but we'll see how it goes. 

There will still be "A video" however, not a tutorial most likely.

The good news is I'm making some good progress, and have enroute solved the "issues" with the previous tile system of having a player hitbox, or a movement speed, that exceeds one ti...

Tile collisions - Platformer Example

http://shaunspalding.co.uk/files/TileCollisionsPlatformer.yyz

A few people had been having issues adapting tile collisions to a platformer. Now I said often "Just add gravity". Which largely is the case, but you also have to check for jumping (It's done the same as the other collisions, two bottom points +1 in ...

Results: Slopes it is!

This one is gonna be a toughy, as I explained in the post. Might not make it for Friday but we'll see how it goes!

On an unrelated note, it's my birthday! I am now 28. This is too close to 30 and I don't like it. But hooray! 

-S

Tile Collisions - Prep Work & Code optimization

Here is some insight for you guys on some of the process behind this week's video and why I've made certain choices about the code we'll be doing. I dunno if talking about this is of interest to you guys, but let me know if it is and I can do it more often!

The image here is what I've more or less nailed down as the main chunk of player code I'll be teaching in this week's video. Teaching you how to collide with a tile layer rather than collide with memory/cpu intensive objects! The more ...

Back to work!

Just a quick message to let you all know I'm officially back to the grindstone and working on a new video for this Friday. Voting will likely open this weekend for the next none-platformer video.

Both me and my other half have enjoyed and sorely needed the time off. Thank you all for your understanding. =)

Complete Platformer Part 5 - Gamepads

Part 5 live for you guys now, live to everyone tomorrow (For realsies this time, assuming no daft mistakes that need fixing in this one.)

That's gonna be all from me until Friday after next (1st of September) or earlier if the video is ready.

Thank you guys for your support, see you in a couple of weeks =)

$500 Reached!

These things come and go as peoples financial situations change and for hundreds of other reasons, so it might be that you're reading this next to a $450 or some other wildly different and embarassingly Not > $500 number on my front page but as of writing, we've just hit $500 a month pledged!

I think(!) my first Patreon campaign peaked around $560 or $600 so it's safe to say we've got this second train going a lot faster! I think things have been going better generally, I'm putting out more...

Next three videos and a quick break in between

So the results of last week's poll are in, but it was absurdly close! 10 votes for Cutscenes so I'll be delivering on that, but since second place (Tile Collisions) got just one vote less and I know some of you have wanted that for a while, I'll be delivering that afterwards instead of running another poll. That works out best for me anyway as it gives me some time to do the research necessary. While I've done tile collision stuff before, there's a few different methods and I want to explore the...

Complete Platformer - Part 4

No early release this week unfortunately, Two back to back wedding weekends to travel to have been killing a lot of my time, just about managed to stay on schedule though! Also recovering from a bit of a cold so sorry for my slightly congested voice.

I figure people who are following along with this still are in it for the long haul so I'm making these videos pretty long and detailed now since part 3 went down well.

Simple enemies, hitting them, using your first shader(!) to make them fl...

Complete Platformer - Part 3

Out to the public on Friday as usual. If you haven't already you've got until Sunday night to vote on the topic for next week's video: https://www.patreon.com/posts/tutorial-topic-13056256

Remember if you've pledged this month you won't show up in the credits of videos until the following month (after completing your first pledge) =)

Thank you all again!

(PS: This is a LONG video that's ta...

Tutorial topic for July 28th

This poll will run for $5+ supporters from now until Sunday night and will decide the next video topic. (This week I'm working on Complete Platformer part 3) It's kinda handy now in retrospect to have my platformer stuff in between each week as it gives you all a decent time frame in which to vote.

Here are some things I've been thinking about doing and I'm confident I could do. If you have other suggestions for what you'd like to see in future polls, please do leave a comment!

Going to be a quick daft video this week!

Instead of a full fledged tutorial I'm going to put most of my time today into the 3rd part of the Platformer series so I can bring that to you guys a bit quicker instead (Public release will still be Friday, $5 Patreon release whenever it's ready). I've just run out of time to really get a tutorial together today that I'm happy with quality wise (see previous posts for details re: Sine wave shader tutorial)

Going to upload a QUICK TIP video today on something daft and short and simple that I ...

Patron Rewards Updated

I've made a few changes to the rewards/pledge tiers section that I want to go over.

Mostly this is just clarity stuff as the formatting & wording was weird and inconsistent as some stuff had been left over from my pre-YoYo Patreon. 

1. I have removed the mention of "Special recognition in twitch streams (tba!)" as this was to do with things like the emblems for Tribal Tension, which now exists, is mentioned in the $1 tier and applies to every tier. I plan to do more stuff like t...

Quick Update & Tribal Tension emblems

Hello! I've been working fairly hard on Tribal Tension, my twitch RTS game often streamed live at twitch.tv/shaunjs

I've recently added catapults among other changes!

I was going to create a video this week on sine wave shaders, the sort of thing used in my animated coastline mini guide: https://twitter.com/shaunspalding/status/885202660563058688

But I think my method could use work,...

Complete Platformer - Part 2

Animation and sprite changing. Public on YouTube tomorrow :)

Outline shader tutorial

Going into some detail about how the pixel outline shader works. There's not a lot of code in this one, which I shared directly on twitter yesterday:

https://twitter.com/shaunspalding/status/880070685153951744

publicly released tomorrow but feel free to share =)

Platformer stuff continues next week as discussed before!

-S

Monthly Update for June

Whoa. There's been a whole lot more of you show up in the last few days. I guess my new platformer series is off to a good start!

 I plan to add to that series once every two weeks. So this week will be a different topic covered, next week we'll be back to the platformer series. Hopefully videos will be back to my kinda private goal of one-a-week with huge things like my GMS2/GMS1.X comparison video out of the way. I hope you've been enjoying the new editing in my videos, I've finally lea...

Complete Platformer Tutorial (Part 1)

It's eaaaarly accesss!

So for a lot of you, this probably covers old ground. This first part of a new Platformer series is a really info dense crash course aimed at total beginners (Hence the length, stopping to explain variables, and so on) but will pick up its pace very quickly. This is an ambitious attempt to create a definitive course for as many people as possible and be a new flagship course for my channel.

I won't be spending months on end just making this. I'll be trying to do a ...

What I'm up to this week.

So I've started work on a new Platformer series. 

Yeah another one.

My goal here is to bring together a lot of my other content as well as bring forward a lot of older content for GameMaker Studio 2, and wrap it together in an expandable learning package. My first platformer series was strong but it was haphazard and random, this series has a clear goal in mind that can then be expanded. I've based it largely on a series of lectures I did on "Game Feel" recently when I realised that...

GameMaker: Studio vs GameMaker Studio 2

Releasing this video early for you guys, will be out on Friday for everybody else!

It's been a long time building this one, probably due to way too much fancy pants after effects text. It's an addictive process.

Next up will be more tutorials as previously discussed =)

Let me know what you think and thanks again for all your support!

Progress Update

There's two different major types of video that I do. One is a walkthrough/tutorial type video. These take a lot of work but they're relatively fast to make once I've researched and scripted it. I record me doing the thing and talking you through it, sometimes re-record certain sections, stitch it together, edit the audio, add in any helpful diagrams or useful video magic, add in the credits, apply a bit of polish throughout and then render uncompressed.

Then compress with MeGUI (I don't like ...

Where I'm at right now

Hello! Some of you will have noticed I've actually managed to somehow put out a new video every week the last few weeks! Unfortunately that somewhat accidental chain breaks today. I'm working on a GMS2 vs GMS1.x comparison video where I talk about the main changes between the two versions and give my own insights on them after using GMS2 for quite a while. Along with "is it worth upgrading" and all of those common pressing questions. But there's quite a bit of editing to do so its gonna be a bit...

GameMaker - Building a Twitch.tv game or overlay

A few (ok a lot) of people have asked how I did the whole twitch implementation for Tribal Tension and my stream. It's pretty easy and can be done without actually knowing anything about networking because "kbjwes77" has done all the heavy lifting for you.

Here's a video tutorial on setting up and using his github project to work with just twitch chat, say things to a chat, recieve info from a chat, just by calling his ace scripts.

Cool stars for cool kids

I've added COOL STARS that show up by the names of patreon supporters in Tribal Tension. In order for this to happen you need to have told me your twitch username. If you haven't done that, feel free to comment below or on my previous post about twitch names!

-S

Edit: I've decided to extend this offer to $1 supporters as well, as its just something simple and nice that costs me nothing at all really.

Ludum Dare 38 Timelapse

Ooff, what a weekend! And week!

So over the weekend I took part in Ludum Dare 38 and built Tribal Tension:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/tribal-tension-twitch

It's a game you can play live over twitch and has since been running 24/7 on my twitch channel. I've had a ton of fun with this project and really want to continue work developing it. I've patched the game a number of...