DREAMBOUND - Bound to the dream of releasing before 2037

[Droolie]

The full game won't be released before next year, but the demo will be out in a few months.

[MLII]

You just can't make up your mind.

You just can't make up your mind.

DOUBLE POST XD

Anyway, looks good.

[Phoenixan]

Do you want me to send the RZFGP project files to you?

Yes, please. That'd be great. To my e-mail or on MSN if I catch you. I'm hardly on MSN these days. XD

Anyway, nice new title. Better than the previous, just because it's simple. I will admit though, not the most original thing you can do, but it all works. (Eclipse happens to be the name of one of my absolute favorite Source mods. )

[Droolie]

Do you want me to send the RZFGP project files to you?

Yes, please. That'd be great. To my e-mail or on MSN if I catch you. I'm hardly on MSN these days. XD

Anyway, nice new title. Better than the previous, just because it's simple. I will admit though, not the most original thing you can do, but it all works. (Eclipse happens to be the name of one of my absolute favorite Source mods. )

I'll send it to your email later today or tomorrow.

And thanks.
It's indeed not the most original thing I could do, but I did it anyway, because it's simple, and it actually fits the story ( unlike the previous one ). And a title has to fit the story, doesn't it?

[stan423321]

No, I have an orsum theory why did you select it.
http://www.backboneentertainment.com/
You remember older name of this?

[Rsandee]

Drolpiraat you... are... AWESOME!!!
When i understand coding and stuff maybe i will make my own Rayman game with lums and the Rayman 3 suits too... and it will be in 2D

[Droolie]

Thanks.
And that's great, I'd love to see more fangames ( and I'd love to see a Rayman 4 too, of course ).

No, I have an orsum theory why did you select it.
http://www.backboneentertainment.com/
You remember older name of this?

Digital Eclipse Software. I looked it up on Google. That's not why I selected that name though. It's actually just because it really fits the story of the game...

[stan423321]

It's the company which, you know, developed Rayman Advance.

[Rsandee]

Droolie, next time you upload your game... use Mediafire

[Droolie]

Droolie, next time you upload your game... use Mediafire

Of course. The next demo will be hosted on multiple sites. Mediafire, rapidshare, megaupload, box.net, willhostforfood, 64digits, even yoyogames ( and maybe even more ).

[spiraldoor]

Since Rayman's world has two moons and two suns, I'm guessing there's some kind of double-solar eclipse in it?

[CheatCat]

In Rayman 3, there is 6 moons..

[Droolie]

Since Rayman's world has two moons and two suns, I'm guessing there's some kind of double-solar eclipse in it?

Who said it is a solar eclipse?
It could also be a double-lunar eclipse, a normal lunar eclipse, or an eclipse of something else...

In Rayman 3, there is 6 moons..

... Huh? 6 moons? Can you show me a picture with all 6 moons on it? Then, perhaps, I'll believe you...

[Phoenixan]

Hey, dude. You're a GameMaker guy, so I thought you might like to test this out.

You see, I have an old CRT monitor sitting here that I decided to try my game out on. It's roughly 10 years old.. it sucks, really. Actually, it's so dark that, even with nVidia gamma, brightness, and contrast adjustment, it's way to dark to even view this very website with.

So anyway, I coded a little "brightness correction" script today. You might find it handy. With some brightness added via this script, I actually made my game incredibly beautiful (and very playable) on this dark monitor.

Code: Select all

if global.brtCorrect>=0.1 || global.brtCorrect<=-0.1{
  if global.brtCorrect>0{
    draw_set_blend_mode(bm_add)
    draw_set_color(c_white)
    draw_set_alpha(abs(global.brtCorrect))
  }else{var rgbVal;
    rgbVal = max(-255,26*(global.brtCorrect*10))
    draw_set_blend_mode(bm_subtract)
    draw_set_color(c_white-make_color_rgb(rgbVal,rgbVal,rgbVal))}
  draw_rectangle(view_xview[0],view_yview[0],view_xview[0]+view_wview[0],view_yview[0]+view_hview[0],false)
  draw_set_blend_mode(bm_normal)
}

Simply include some brightness meter or something in the options. For testing purposes, I simply added this to F1 and F2 keys.

D&D Code:

Code: Select all

Key Press Event for F1 Key:
if global.brtCorrect is larger than -0.9
      set variable global.brtCorrect relative to -0.1

Key Press Event for F2 Key:
if global.brtCorrect is smaller than 0.9
      set variable global.brtCorrect relative to 0.1

F1 to make it brighter, F2 to make it darker (if it's too bright on a LCD or something).

Just thought you might find some usefulness from it. I might put it in the code section on the GMC.

[neo]

Pretty cool man. I might try using gamemaker some time, when I get a better computer, haha.

[Droolie]

Thanks, neo. ^^ And that's a great idea.

@Phoenixan: Hey, that's really nice! A good idea, I'll include that in the options. I'll try it out later today...
EDIT -> I tried it, it works pretty good. If you don't mind, I'll include it in the options, and credit you.
Now if there was only something like this that could decrease contrast... or makes the image monochrome ( then I could draw the monochrome surface over the normal screen with a set alpha... which would give the effect of decreasing contrast )... *goes to the GMC to check*
( I need that feature for one of the areas in the game )
EDIT 2 -> I can only find one way of doing that realtime, but it's really, really slow ( even on my new super-fast computer, it works at 30FPS... half the normal speed! ).
Okay, I guess I won't be able to achieve effects like this and this then?

[Phoenixan]

It's probably really slow in your game where you're using both lighting effects with surfaces and that effect also with surfaces. Surfaces take up a lot of memory.

And the brightness use is fine. It's why I posted it.

By the way, I did more messing about with surfaces yesterday when I came across a problem like this with someone else's lighting engine.
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?show ... try3189260
I also pulled off testing it on a 8800, and it seems that the 18x series of nVidia drivers really screws up surfaces when people use alpha channels within their blending modes. This lighting engine seems to do what some others I've found do, where they apply alpha to the lights and then blend them in the surface rather than just let the blending modes take care of that. Seems to be a bit of a faster method indeed, but the problem is, it doesn't work on current nVidia drivers. :\ And no way I'm going backward in driver series just to get a handful of GameMaker games to work proper when it really kicks up the performance for other games like UT3 and TF2.

I also came across a further issue with the room transitions combined with tiles a while ago, and after doing some poking around in the yoyogames boards (the ones besides the GMC), I found that it's also the later nVidia 18x series drivers.

Really annoying, but avoidable still, at least. I'm working on building my own room transition with real-time screenshots of the end & start of the rooms. Might be a little slower, but it'll be worth it if it works with my card and cards like it.

*edit*

And oh, I picked up the speed on my brightness script by about 2-3 extra fps on this computer (could be a major difference on older machines) by simply editing the draw event to be this.

Code: Select all

if global.brtCorrect>=0.1 || global.brtCorrect<=-0.1{
  if global.brtCorrect>0{
    draw_set_blend_mode(bm_add)
    draw_set_color(c_white)
    draw_set_alpha(abs(global.brtCorrect))
  }else{var rgbVal;
    rgbVal = -max(-255,26*(global.brtCorrect*10))
    draw_set_blend_mode(bm_subtract)
    draw_set_color(c_white+make_color_rgb(rgbVal,rgbVal,rgbVal))}
  draw_rectangle(view_xview[0],view_yview[0],view_xview[0]+view_wview[0],view_yview[0]+view_hview[0],false)
  draw_set_blend_mode(bm_normal)
}

I simply avoid having the rgb values be negative, even though it seems to translate it fine either way, this is a little faster.

[Droolie]

Thanks for letting me use the brightness script.

Your link doesn't seem to work, but I've managed to find which engine you're talking about.
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?show ... try3189260
At the moment, my card ( GeForce 9600 ) doesn't seem to have any problems with that engine... so I can't really help you.
But wow, the latest nVidia drivers do seem to mess up some things... I was just thinking of updating, but I guess I'll still wait a little while.

Also, no, that monochrome script is just really slow because that script uses a hack: it makes a screenshot every step, and uses that screenshot together with the sprite_set_alpha_from_sprite function to make the screen black and white.

[Phoenixan]

Wow, THAT would make it incredibly slow. ._.

What driver version do you have?

[Droolie]

175.56. ^^
I'm going to stay with that until that problem has been solved, and if it doesn't get solved, I'm still going to wait, because there is no need to update yet.

Oh, and for everyone who wants to know what I'm busy with now:
I'm now making a better menu. The old one really sucked, and the new one looks a lot better. I can't show it yet, because it isn't completely finished yet, but you'll get to see it in action soon enough...
After improving the menu, the only things I still have to do for the next demo are ( in order ):
1) Improve the getting hurt system
2) Make Volti... uh... Electrix actually get hurt from touching electricity
3) Improve the electricity system
4) Make the level graphics of the third part of "The Sanctuary of Harmony and Peace"
5) Improve one kind of enemy AI
6) Make a boss ( graphics + AI )
7) Make some cutscenes ( some graphics, mostly just timeline coding - this includes the 'developer logos' at the beginning as well )
8 ) Make a pause menu
( The following things may be done, but aren't necessary:
- Make a cage system
- Make a breathing meter ( isn't necessary because at the start of the game you're able to breathe underwater for as long as you like
- Make a Game over screen ( isn't necessary because it's hard to get a game over at the beginning of the game, and plus, it's a demo, so you'll just get teleported to the beginning of the demo/level ) )

And that's all. But that's a lot. And if you have a lot of things to do, it usually takes a lot of time, too. And that's why you'll get to see one or two parts of the demo level in action very soon.