Tile-Thursday 1: 16x16 Desert Tileset Progress 1

Hello everyone,

I have noticed that a lot of the posts I have been writing on Tuesdays have been involving Game Maker primarily; which is to be expected as I progress on projects. That being said - I do not wish to neglect other types of posts - as well as my other skill-sets; such as pixel art. These posts will likely be short - focusing primarily on the tiles themselves.

I have decided to start posting on Thursdays something I nicknamed Tile-Thursday. Every day, I will be working on creating at a minimum 1 tile. That 1 tile will form part of a major tile-set I will be working on for a while. Whether I decide to change tile-sets every month or a few months I have yet to decide on. However, the style will needless to say, need to be consistent whilst I am working on a particular tile-set. These tile-sets may be used in future projects, or I will simply have them on hand for prototyping. The intention here is to practice pixel art, even if I am currently not working with pixel art.

The first tile-set I decided to work on is a 16 x 16 pixel Desert tile-set. 

Up to this point I finished up a few basic floor tiles - however moving forward I have a few ideas on what I want to add - including elevating terrain, ruins, and natural features such as sand piles, and rocks! 

Until next time,
Dylan

Game Maker Progress 32: Zooming and Interfaces

Hello everyone,

Progress on Foundation of Civilisation is proceeding nicely. One the feature I knew I wanted to implement after the concept build is the ability to zoom in and out. Zooming has a lot of benefits to it; from allowing easier planning to giving a sense of scale.

Zoomed In                                                         Zoomed Out

The feature was fairly simple to implement in a basic form at least - it was simply a matter of increase the room size shown within GameMaker's view system for rooms. The challenge part comes in the form of making sure the interface remains consistent.

Zoomed In                                                                       Zoomed Out

Since an interface element [button, text, sprites etc...] were aligned to the interface itself to keep it on screen, should the player move the camera; it needed to have a separate parameter for each zoom level. After a couple of hours work - I managed to find a way to make sure the interface elements remain in place at various levels of zoom. I am currently debating whether or not to modify the size of the interface elements - an argument for keeping it the way that it is being that the player will be able to see more of the map whilst making decisions, one of the reasons I wanted a zooming feature in the first place.

I will keep it as is for the time being; the next play-testing experience will help decide whether it is something to add or keep the way that it is. 

That's it for now! 

Until next time,

Dylan

Game Maker Progress 31: Map-Style Art Style

Hello everyone,

Work on Foundation of Civilisation is progressing nicely. I am taking time to plan out the game-play further before I head into coding it in; in the mean time I decided to test out a few graphical ideas I had! The style I had in mind was to go more towards a hand-drawn map style as a test. 

Districts and Work-Posts would be represented as shown above; giving the game a more hand-drawn style. I will most likely move towards having a more parchment-like graphic for the tiles themselves to fit this style - if I decide to go forward with it.

In terms of the game-play itself - currently I have been using mind-maps to try to determine how I want to take the game forward in it's design. More specifically - I listed the core components that would make up the game; and starting to build outwards, fleshing out those core components until I feel they have sufficient depth. The concept game seemed to have a decent amount of game-play with it's limited amount of elements and options; fleshing out these same components to add depth and also adding other elements that might enhance the game-play [Such a During Game-Play Tutorial, Achievements, and Story Journals that characters in your nation write up based on your actions] could give the game the unique feel I was looking for. 

I will continue to try to concentrate my ideas towards these 3 core components - I will add different major components; if I believe it would be beneficial to the game itself!

Until next time,

Dylan

Game Maker Progress 30: Map Generator Re-built

Hello everyone,

Progress on the new map generator for Foundation of Civilisation is progressing nicely. The new generator uses a different tiles [or rather two types of tiles] to create maps - the sprite sizes have also been increased to allow for better functionality!

The generator works in a simple fashion; a central hexagon tile is spawned, which spawns squares at the top, bottom, left and right of the tile. The square tile then spawns a hexagon, and so on until a map is formed. 

Biomes are operated in a similar fashion to the old generator currently - depending on the sizes of the biome, tiles have a chance to spread their biome to a new tile; otherwise they are assigned a new tile. Certain tiles (such as forests) have a greater chance that if the next tile is not the same, it will become a grasslands biome. This is not necessarily staying as it is - but it does allow me to have extra functionality already built into the generator to use when ready!

I have a few ideas for the square tiles - they can be used to spawn certain special resources or special biomes later on. The idea for adding square tiles with the hexagon tiles came to me whilst trying to figure out what tiles to use for the generator. After trying the hexagon and seeing how those tiles connected - I decided to try to fill the spawn between the hexagons with another type of tile. This was either a square or a triangle, I went with square as it was more simple and I had a good idea of how it would fit into the design of the game later on.

I look forward to bringing you more on this later on!

Until next time,

Dylan

Game Maker Progress 29: Project Foundation of Civilisation

Hello everyone,

Since things have settled down mostly for the moment; it's time to continue with my own personal projects. The Dawn of Civilisation Concept gave me a lot of skills, ideas and feedback which will serve me well for my next project - which I am nicknaming Project Foundation of Civilisation for the moment. 

The first thing that needs to be done is planning out what needs to be done; I plan on having a more solid - yet flexible plan for this project. I want to try out some new project management techniques and systems to help in it's production. 

Following this, I will be working on raising the sizes of the tiles. This will allow me to provide better detail on tiles, as well as add certain features such as the ability to zoom in and out, and better UI elements. I look forward to bringing updates on this project!

Until next time,

Dylan

Game Maker Progress 28: Project Testing

Hello everyone,

It has been a fairly busy last couple of days - but a concept version of Dawn of Civilisation is ready for testing! 

The project is far from anything near completion - however it has reached a very good stage for testing! This has been possibly one of the most insightful works I have embarked on. It is astounding as to the amount of work towards managing data within the game needs to be done to make sure everything works out right. 

Most likely - after a few tests and adjustments, I will be jumping to planning towards what comes next. Most likely working towards making a different version of the game - to continue to develop and progress the concept forward. I have a lot of plans and ideas I want to implement - so there is much to be done! However, I need to work on other projects at the moment for my Masters programme. 

Until next time,

Dylan

Game Maker Progress 27: Game Set-Up, Saving and Loading

Hello everyone!

This past week has been rather productive - coming near to a deadline I've set-up with regards to testing the project and such - I have managed to implement the Game Set-Up system as well as the ability to save and load progress for the most part. I still need to do some more touching up on the saving and loading systems however - the map, together with all the data of the game pieces are saved - and I simply need to make sure there isn't any other variables that need to be saved that exist in the Game State manager rather than game pieces.

The final touches that need to be done before I can officially put a pause on the project for testing - I need to implement an objectives system that will help guide players as they get started, as well as graphical and UI touches. 

It is likely that I will be transitioning the project onto Game Maker Studio 2 some-time near the end of January - however I still need to plan what I want to get done and where I want this project to go before then. 

Until next time,

Dylan