Level cap, content length and other various questions?

[Robotica]

Couple quick questions, what's the current level cap? And how much content is in game? Not in hours, but acts or the main portals? Also out of curiosity do you plan on making new items and eqipment show on character after equip? Thx for a great game.

[Squarebit]

The level cap is at 100 and the levelling pace is quicker than it should be as there isn't as much content yet.. in the end I'll either slow down levelling or increase the cap, we'll see what works best!

Currently there is only the Fallen Temple with 5 major main areas, 5 side quest / optional areas, and two larger boss fights. Working on the next chapter / act currently, and it'll be somewhat larger and feature a bunch of new monsters, quests, bosses, etc :)
There's 3 chapters planned after the next, too. Each of the waypoint devices in the Chronicon hub represents a chapter, hence why there are 4 "broken" ones being repaired by the rude goblin. So there will be a LOT of content by the time we exit Early Access :D

You can also expect some additions/revisions to the first chapter over time...

I am hoping to be able to have some stuff show up on the character, it's a bit problematic as they're animated sprites, meaning anything that needs to be visible on them will be have to be drawn to fit each frame of each animation of each character.. however currently certain armors will change the color scheme of your character. I hope to be able to add more changes than just color in the future!

Thanks and hope you're having a good time :)

[Robotica]

Thanks for another great reply. Sorry for all the questions, hopefully it's not a bother. Something else I would like to know, what can I use the crystals for besides respawning and the merchant at the Chronicon?

Also, I really like how much content you have in act 1, but maybe once you get act 2 released you might want to tone the size of the maps down a bit? They are really big. Speaking of, do you have any idea when you might be ready to release the next act? Will each new act increase the level cap?

And yea I understand how difficult it would be to try and add the items to the characters, it's not really that important, the graphics are good enough in my opinion. Maybe just fine tune some of the rough edges.

Also, I am suprised this game hasn't gotten more attention, it really is well done, especially for an early access. All of the gameplay mechanics are very smooth. I would like to see more skills and abilities though.

[Robotica]

a few more questions while I am at it :)

- What is the last item in the equipment list? I haven't found an item to put there yet? The one that looks kinda like a sun.

- is there a chest or something I can use to store items?

- any way to trade items with my other characters?

- any way to undo skill points?

[Squarebit]

No worries, I enjoy answering these questions :-)

Thank you! Yes, the attention hasn't been very much, but I don't mind - I'm happy to start out with a smaller community and weed out the bugs and smoothen gameplay a bit. I'd be quickly overwhelmed otherwise I think. Anyway, onwards with the questions!

Currently the only use for crystals are respawns and the vendor, but there are more usages coming, such as crafting.

I am actually considering making the maps a bit smaller, and perhaps making more of them instead, for a better flow and progression.

I don't know when the next chapter will be out.. there are many challenges to overcome and much testing needed, I don't want to make any promises I can't keep, but I'll make an announcement some time before it's done! I've got about 3 areas and several quests finished for it already, though. Not sure about level cap stuff yet, it's all very experimental at this point (max level, levelling speed, skill point acquisition, etc)

The last item is an additional slot for accessories, just drag one in there, or hold X when equipping (on gamepad) - if you hover an accessory it should say "<button> to check other acc." to compare the stats with the 2nd slot. Holding that button while selecting Equip will also make it go in there. It's a bit unclear, though.

A storage chest is coming, where you can store stuff and access it with any character, so it also acts as a trade thingy.

As of the update I just published you can reset your skill points with Elixir of the Mind that you buy from the vendor in town!

About skills and abilities.. a full overhaul of the skill system is on the drawing board, to allow a certain degree of customization of each skill similar to how legendary and unique items may affect them. But it'll be a while before that's done, I'm looking at providing about 2 alternatives to each skill for each class, so much designing, testing, and coding to do! But yeah that will take a pretty long time to do, as I need to do get the other chapters out and other mechanics and stuff.

I'll be happy to answer any more questions if you have!

[Robotica]

Squarebit, thanks again my friend. Good answers, really! I really liked what you said about the skills, that could be a lot of fun. Another critique i'd make is that once you get a good setup, you don't really diverge from that style and it feels kinda repetive just using the same few abilities over and over. Not that it is really a problem, but it would be nice to have some more diversity.

And about the last item slot, wow I can't believe I missed that. I'm playing with a gamepad, I dind't realize i could select the second item like that. Dang I been using 1 item this whole time lol.

- Okay I do have another question, what are keys for? And what about treasure keys?

- Are you just one person making this game?

- What game engine? Unity?

- Whats your favorite class/setup?

[Tooopy]

Don't worry I missd the last slot until I was level 44...

[Squarebit]

Many miss that slot.. I should make it more clear.. (any ideas?)

Yeah there isn't much reason to change your build right now, so I have some plans that may force players to alternate their builds / have backup skills for certain encounters, at least on higher difficulties. It has to do with elements :-)

Keys are for locked chests, but the key to chest ratio is a bit high now... actually it's super high when I think of it. I'm probably going to pop more locked chests in there rather than reducing keys. By treasure keys I assume you mean the unique Treasury Key? It's for, well, a Treasury area in the same zone it drops. It's not consumed on use so you can keep it if you want to return to the Treasury (key is always needed to enter).

Yep it's just me doing the design, coding etc. I've had some friends help me out a bit with art though. The vast majority of pixel art was outsourced since I can't even draw stick men without messing up. Same goes for the music / ambience tracks.

I'm using GameMaker: Studio to make Chronicon.

Favorite class or setup.. hard question..
I'm probably gonna say Templar and focusing on electric spells; Thunderstrike + Discharge + Ascension, and fill up most passives (especially Thundering Retribution).

So many flashy things... it's mesmerizing. :)

[Robotica]

Originally posted by Squarebit:

Many miss that slot.. I should make it more clear.. (any ideas?)

Simple, just make it so that when you select a accessory it puts the little arrow next to both accessory slots in your invenory. For showing which one is currently selected to equip to, you could just it's color some how, or maybe change the opacity of the other one. Anyways, just a thought.

Also, I am really impressed at how good the gameplay is, especially for being mainly built by one person. I'm actually very suprised you used Game Maker, though I don't know much about it, I just wouldn't of expected such a quality game from it, no offense to Game Maker :P

Is this your full time job? Working on this game? This might be more personal than you are willing to share, but now I am feeling inspired to make a game myself lol

[Squarebit]

That's a good idea, I'll have that in by the next update, thanks!

Thank you :)
Yes, GameMaker does have a bit of a bad rep, but it's actually quite powerful when you use it right. Just look at Risk of Rain or Gunpoint, for example! And it's pretty amazing how you can port your game from the same code to iOS/Andriod/PC/windows phone/MAC OS X/Linux/Tizen/xbox/ps4 with the click of a button. Consoles requires like licenses and stuff from the manufacturers (sony/microsoft) though. Not sure how the console bit works, tbh.

Yep, it's my full time job.. I work about 10-12 hours a day, and make myself available all my awake time via forums and social media.. so it's kinda what I do right now. I love it, but it took a lot of sacrifices to get here, I used up all my life savings and all my free time, had to cut down on all my expenditures & social gatherings, and in the end I'd make more flipping burgers at this rate. Not complaining, I actually love what I do, but indie development has been romanticised & glorified a whole lot recently. Not everyone can be Vlambeer :D
Those guys a major inspiration for me, though.

I'd recommend everyone to at least try it out. But don't quit your job for it x)

[Robotica]

Hey Squarebit, it's me again! So the other day when I said I was feeling inspired to make a game myself, I wasn't joking :) I am a programmer by trade and have a good bit of experience with graphic design, mainly for interface design and not so much character design. But anyways, I've always wanted to make my own game, since I was a kid, but never really got into game design apart from making a few flash games when I was in college. I dabbled a bit here and there with Unity and a few 3d engines, but I never really felt like I would be able to build a real quality game. Well, I'm still not sure I will be able to accomplish it, but I'd like to try.

Anyways, my point to all of this is that after playing your game and finding out that it was built with GameMaker, along with the others you mentioned like Risk of Rain (which is one of my fav games) I got really intrigued. So I've been tinkering with it over these past couple days and found it actually quite powerful and much more robust that I had expected. After learning more about it I would really love to ask you a few questions about how you are using it to build your game.

-- Your game runs really smooth, especially for how large the maps/rooms are and how many objects are in said room. Are you doing any kind of special optimizations? Like by passing all the graphics through shaders so the gpu renders them all?

-- Speaking of shaders, I assume that things like enemies getting hit and flashing white are shaders? The glow around lights is a shader? Or maybe a translucent png? The overarching ambient light?

Theres more I would love to pick your brain about, but I won't bother you. Honestly learning the GML language is really straight forward, my only struggle thus far is understanding what exactly is going on with the shaders. I understand some of it, like how GML uses and accesses it, but the math of the vertices for the OpenGL ES Shading language is where I start scratching my head :P I read through a bunch of tutorials and docs about them, and from what it seems I need to run as much graphics through the shaders as I can in order to have the game run smooth, which worries me since that might be overly complicated :P

[Squarebit]

That's awesome!

I'd be happy to help you get started :)

I do a loooot of optimizations, but I don't use many shaders (they confuse me).
Enemies getting hit, the color swaps on your character from certain equipment, the pause screen blur, and highlights around objects on mouseover are shaders, but other than that there aren't any. All light effects are done via a surface and basic draw functions like draw_circle_color and using blend modes to cut colored holes in a dark overlay. It's pretty simple actually! I'd have made it a shader if I could, though, as that would be faster.
No need to use shaders for regular drawing!

Other optimization suggestions:

• If your game is aligned to a grid, do not use objects for walls & floor - use tiles for visuals and a ds_grid/array for world collisions
  
• Use the deactivate functions to deactivate instances outside the view
  
• Do not actually create all instances until they become active the first time (I use "spawner" objects that spawn squads of monsters and clusters of breakable objects for example, this cuts overall count down until you've actually seen them. Deactivation takes some processing after all)
  
• The instance_activate_object function is SLOW though so avoid that one.
  
• Make your own collision system with box and/or radial collisions, because it'll be a lot faster than the already existing system (the built-in one is mainly intended for prototyping, or so I've been told)

Some pointers, anyway. I use everything mentioned above and some other stuff.
I'm happy to have inspired you :D
If I can help out in any way just let me know!

[Robotica]

Hey man, first just let me say thanks again for actually being so helpful and nice with your responses, I really do appreciate it. Secondly, I think your ideas here are all very good, and I'm pretty sure I actually understand everything you are saying. If I could clarify one thing though, I'd like to discuss your first point about setting up a room using ds_grid.

I briefly skimmed over it while reading over the yoyo docs for GML, but now that you bring it up I have done a little more research. If I am understanding correctly, a ds_grid is simply a matrix? It's just a way to represent a set of numbers and is not in any way directly tied to any object instances or rooms by default. It is simply a way to store data, correct?

So, in my dream game I want my levels to be procedural generated, like yours I'm thinking to do this I would use a few different ds_grids, maybe one if I can have a multi-dimensional grid?, and store things like enemy spawn locations, where the walls/boundaries will be, and other various things that will show up in a room. Then I will need to manually place the objects in the room using functions like instance_create. Am I on the right track with that?

Also I hadn't really looked at instance_activate_object yet, but reading it just now it seems like it would be an easy way to respawn enemies... However, if I am generating all of these objects from my ds_grids I would only need to just recreate them from my grid, no need to 'reset' the original one...

And yea shaders are definitely confusing lol, but I do plan on using them for some of the same things you mentioned. I think for my first 'real' game I plan to try and make it will be a twin stick shmup. One of the things I want to do is give the ship a shield which will show up as a blue outline that expands out slightly from the edges of the ship. I was thinking I would use a shader to do this, as it should just be a simple shape that matches the geometry of sprites alpha mask with a little scaling and color shading. So yea, I might try to write that myself, woohoo :)

Okay, sorry for such a long winded message, I just find this kinda of stuff super interesting, but I get the feeling you do too. Well sir, hope you are enjoying your weekend.

[Squarebit]

Hey no worries, I enjoy helping out when I can :)

Yes a ds grid is basically a 2D array that you either tie to an object or make "global". Unfortunately GameMaker does not support 3D arrays, so myself I use a grid for tile data and lists for spawn locations. When I generate dungeons I basically think of it as drawing on graph paper :) and yep instance_create is what you'd use to spawn things!

It sounds like you have a fun project ahead of you and yes it is indeed very interesting to discuss these things! Unfortunately my reply is a bit short this time as I'm not at home and on mobile with bad coverage - I'll try to check on the forums occasionally though!

Have a good weekend :)

[Robotica]

Cool man, good to know. Iv'e seen some Gamemaker 3d game examples, but they are not like full 3d games. There was this one demo though, it was called "I'm a Designer and I wanna help", it had a pretty good 3d effect. But I am really only interested in making 2d games, right now anyways. My 3D skills are just about absolute.

Anyways, here is a more technical question. I see that I can run the game normally and also in debug mode. Debug mode looks like I can only see variables and control the games steps frame by frame, which is nice, but is there a way where I can run the game, tweak my script, and see the results without having to restart it?

[Squarebit]

I meant 2D and 3D matrixes, not graphics :)

You can do a lot of neat stuff in the debug mode by right clicking the debugger window and adding in new things like instance list, render info, surface/texture inspection. But sadly no, you cannot tweak on the fly. Always gotta re-run.