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Plextona (action/RPG overhead game)

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I am going to make an entire game like this:



The game will be in the style of an Atari 2600 game. The goal is to have 96 levels. It will not have any music, but only sound effects.

I believe that there are enough resources here to make this happen. I know that I also have another puzzle hack that I'm working on, but I will be working on this project too.
Looks pretty interesting. I like the simplicity in the graphics.

Good luck with that.
I hope you think through your design. You can do some really interesting puzzle stuff with this overhead layout. It looks cool, reminds me a bit of COLORS. Good luck.
looks interesting, but do you think you can really get 96 levels of interesting out of this? you just have to be careful. 96 levels of the same gimmick will get tiring really quickly
^ what i came here to say. like im curious, what exactly constitutes a level? just walking to the right, shooting enemies? I'm assuming that enemy was just a redrawn spiny, which why it was walking on the terrain, so are enemies still constrained to the floor?

I'm sorry, but it literally do not see any way this will keep being interesting past level... idk, even 50's kind of pushing it. But it's early, so hopefully you have some tricks up your sleeve for this one.
ask me if i give a f*ck...
I've been thinking about this idea for a little bit and here is some more info.

There are plenty of enemies and sprites to use in this style of game. For example there are many enemies which are not effected by gravity and these are perfect for what I'm trying to accomplish.

Here are a few sprites which work for this game style:

Bullet bill
Turn block bridge vertical and horizontal
Fish horizontal/vertical

Even the Chainsaw can be used, all I have to do is make the path invisible and then make the chainsaw a monster and then it looks like hes walking around in a pattern.

Thwomp
Ball and Chain
Wooden spike
Reflecting fireball
Gas Bubble

and the list goes on. There are also tons of custom sprites which I can use too.

I want the game to be almost like a Zelda 3 clone in some ways. I will have keys to find to unlock doors and some levels will be like dungeons.

There are tons of custom things here I can use so I will see just how many levels I can make.

Anyway just trust me.
biggest problem you'll face is that your levels have very little verticality (or very little horizontal space in the case of vertical levels) because SMW's engine is obviously not optimized for an overhead playing style.
It is possible to make interesting, though. You'll just have to think your design through very thoroughly.
Originally posted by Torchkas
biggest problem you'll face is that your levels have very little verticality (or very little horizontal space in the case of vertical levels) because SMW's engine is obviously not optimized for an overhead playing style.
It is possible to make interesting, though. You'll just have to think your design through very thoroughly.


If I remember correctly, someone made a tool which allows levels to be made that are odd ball in shape. That is probably what I will have to look into.

http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=58961
Update:

I can squeeze in a horizontal level 2 rooms high and in a vertical level 2 rooms wide for the game.

With transition blocks I can jump to other unused smw levels and try and make the levels seem bigger.

The way the game will work is that each level will be basically like a dungeon similar to dungeons in Zelda 3. There will be a bunch of rooms with enemies, puzzles and keys where you walk around and beat each level.

At the end of each level/dungeon there will possibly be a boss. Once you beat the boss you move onto the next level. I may try and make some upgrades for the player. For example I will try and use some of the HP patches hosted here to try and give the player a health bar and as for a weapon upgrade I can make some enemies take 5 fireball hits to beat and then later on get an upgraded weapon which kills the same enemy in just 1 hit. In reality they would actually be 2 separate sprites with different amounts of fireball hits required to kill them, but it would look like the player is getting an upgrade!

I will be using sprites that are most likely not affected by gravity so that they fit in this overhead style type game. I can always code some new sprites too, which I might do. I want to keep the style of the game similar to that of the Atari 2600 or second generation type console game simply because it makes the project much more manageable. It would be like having a SUPER Atari 2600 game because its really an SNES game, but only pretending to be a much more old school looking game.



I will have music for the game too. I will most likely pick tracks from the music section here which fit the theme of my game and I may also ask some talented people here if they want to make something specifically for my game.

I also have some ideas on how to create pseudo layers for the player. So that I can have an upstairs and downstairs in the rooms. What I have in mind is to make certain blocks appear and disappear when the player walks over certain tiles which are invisible to the player. For example if I want the player to walk under a bridge I can put a tile right in front of the bridge which makes blocks appear that have a higher priority than mario so mario goes under the bridge. Then while mario is going to walk on the bridge (the higher level) I can then make those blocks disappear so that mario appear above the bridge. So its a way of making it look like there are layers, but really there aren't. Enemies would not be able to walk in these areas since it would ruin the illusion so they would have to be carefully placed in these types of rooms.

I will also be trying to recreate many things that appear in Zelda 3, but only in the smw engine. Since there are so many wonderful blocks here some of these things are pretty easy to recreate. Such as a door that closes on the player right after the player enters the room or hitting a switch with an arrow that makes blocks go from being solid to passable.

In the image that I posted above those white arrow looking blocks are actually 1 way passable blocks. The pots are currently the smw purple blocks. I'm still working on hiding items behind the pots. I also want the coin counter to represent the arrows/fireballs that the player shoots. I also want the coin amount to decrease each time the fireball is shot. This way it gives players a reason to hunt down more ammo and makes them use their ammo wisely.

I have named the hack "Plextona" and here is the reasoning. Originally I had an idea for a Zelda 3 hack that I called Plextona, it was also going to be Atari looking, but I'm not really that great at Zelda 3 hacking so I will be just converting my game to work with smw. Just to let everyone know, I have been using the Zelda 3 editor Hyrule Magic for many years now making things for a Zelda 3 hack, so I already have many room designs and ideas made. It's just that again they will be used in the smw engine rather than Zelda 3.

So here is the story:

Plextona is a goddess of a realm. She makes sure that in her realm there is peace and harmony. One day though, a powerful demon ripped a hole into her realm and overpowered her. Her guards tried to destroy the demon yet they were defeated. Plextona knowing that she is no match for the demon creates a force-field like shield around her as a defense mechanism to protect her. The demon then gives birth to many other monsters which invade the rest of the realm killing all the inhabitants or sending them into retreats.

With her remaining energy she creates a warrior out of her pure imagination to battle against these monsters and demons with the hope that the warrior can discover the enemies weaknesses and destroy the demon which caused so much destruction.

Also waiting on Ruberjig to upload some 1 screen at a time blocks and possibly level asm.
The story also have that Atari 2600 vibe, I will say. Definitely the big thing here is to make it varied. Top-down games are usually tough to pull off in this view, but I mean there's a ton of examples that do it well, so I wish you the best of luck. It would be funny that, for that extra touch, you make the graphics even more blocky that they fit the 2600 style you're going for. Whatever you do, again, best of luck to you. :)
Click here to enter the world of mediocre!
Originally posted by Sokobansolver
If not for the fact that vertical space might be a challenge and the LM screen, I might have easily mistaken it for making your own game.


Honestly, you could've fooled me as well. I will say, Final Theory has some unique ideas that I would have never thought of for a SMW hack. And I'm being honest.
Click here to enter the world of mediocre!
Here is an update on the game.

I have decided on how the rooms will be set out. Each room will have at least 1 door connecting them together with a total of 12 possible connections to other rooms as seen here in the picture.



After making this general rule for how rooms will connect to each other I sat down and designed just a bunch of rooms.



Right now I'm just using a solid block with no texture/graphics on it to represent the solid parts of the rooms, however I want to put some basic graphics in there such as brick walls or cave walls or something. I will still do this in the Atari 2600 theme though just because it makes it so easy to make things like this and this is the style that I want. Also I would like to try and make all rooms unique and different in some way. This would make for a very unique game play experience and keep things fresh. In the early stages I will only have rooms which connect to each other via North, South, East, West, but then as the player continues to play later on I will open up all the possibility for connecting rooms which would make for more complex dungeons.

I've always wanted to make homebrew games for old systems like the Atari, but actually doing it is beyond my knowledge at this time. Since I know how to hack smw now (at least a little bit) this can allow me to create games that look like they are for old retro systems even if they are really for the SNES.

I might even be starting this project on a new rom since I was just using my last mario hack and building this project inside of it. There will also be certain levels which just have people to talk to and do exploring instead of just dungeon level after dungeon level without any breaks. The game will have a serious tone and will have a philosophical theme to it. The main character that you play after all is only a thought from another creatures imagination and so questions like:

Are thoughts real?
Where do thoughts come from?
Can a thought achieve self awareness?

can be addressed and talked about.

For the bosses I will probably just pick bosses that already exist and code in a fireball counter so that after a certain number of fireball hits/pop sprite bullets the boss dies. Even though most of the bosses here aren't meant to fit into a overhead style game I can always place in the level invisible sprite solid blocks to make them seem to be on the floor and not being under gravity.

Things I need that are important.

1) Need the pop sprite to be modified to allow for shooting in 4 directions with 2 frames of walking animation for the character. Also when you hold the L and R buttons it locks your position allowing you to move in any direction yet, still be able to shoot in only 1 direction for strafing.

2) Blocks and or level ASM that allows for 1 screen at a time gameplay. When I walk from one room to another room I want the camera to snap to the next room.

3) I have made many puzzles and designs in the Zelda 3 editor Hyrule Magic and I want to transfer some of these ideas over to SMW. One thing that I want to transfer over is a pushable block that can be pushed in 4 directions. It would probably be a sprite which when the player pushes on it for a certain amount of time it then moves to the next 16x16 pixel grid. It might even have to be a block sprite combo.

After you push on a block for X amount of time it turns into a sprite and then moves in that direction and snaps onto the next 16x16 grid then becomes a block again.

If anyone is so generous and wants to code something just let me know as the project may heavily depend on these things.

Thanks.
Here are some more room designs. I'm working up just a bunch of room designs so that when I start making whole levels I will have a stash to pull from depending on what I need. There of course will be tons more room designs which depend on how certain sprites work, but I'm not there yet.

I still have a request out there to make blocks or level asm which only shows 1 screen at a time. So once you enter an area you only see 1 screen until you go to another area. If anyone wants to help it will be much appreciated.



It's going to be a big game. I need to check out the RPG health patches and see which one will be best for the game as I don't want the normal mario powerup health.

And I also want to use that dialog patch that allows for all the RPG dialog stuff. There will be text in the game and a compelling story.

There will also be upgrades, but the player will get the upgrade at the end of the level so then in level asm or as a new sprite I can give the new ability in the next level. By doing this I can upgrade the player and make the player feel like their are getting stronger and stronger as the game goes on.

The dungeons will start out small at the beginning like only so many rooms, but then as the game progresses the dungeons will get bigger and more complex.

The next step that I need to work on is starting a fresh new rom and go on from there.
Okay, update time!

Here is another batch of levels that I've made. The whole idea of doing this is so that I have already have assets made for when I make the actual game. This way I can just pull from a batch of my already made rooms when I need something.

One thing I did different here is that I tested out slant type objects. These will allow me to make all kinds of interesting rooms.



But enough making levels for now. I need to really start on a fresh rom. I think I'm going to expand it to 4MB since I plan on putting tons of custom sprites and blocks in the game.

Now, for some super special news. A very talented ASM hacker here coded something very special for me. It's the action adventure character that I had requested in the asm request thread.

This could actually potentially be something really big. As it would allow for other people to also make over-head style games. It could even possibly make over world editing a thing of the past as all you have to do to not have an over world is use a regular level and have a bunch of warp blocks sending the player to the other levels.

I will post a video on this soon.
Absolutely bizarre, this has potential.
What made you change your mind about the music?
I gotta be honest, I haven't really read everything you've written but holy hell this is certainly something. Kudos for the dedication you put into making all those rooms, there are some really weird and interesting shapes there :P Good luck with this #tb{^V^}
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